More reviews from the past several months in Eye Weekly. Live reviews will follow shortly. Links connect to the original review on the Eye site, currently under construction and full of bugs--for example, the site says I gave Nathan Lawr a mere one star, instead of the proper four he deserves. Don't believe everything you read.
In alphabetical order: Nathan Lawr, Red Stick Ramblers, David Shrigley's Worried Noodles, Bob Snider, Stars, Bobb Trimble, Turbo Fruits.
NATHAN LAWR AND THE MINOTAURS - A Sea of Tiny Lights (Minotaur Music)
****
Nathan Lawr has been an MVP in Toronto’s music scene for years now, ever since his time behind the skins for Royal City and the Fembots, among others. And yet his solo work as a singer/songwriter—this one marks his third full-length—remain mysteriously unheralded, especially considering how accessible and instantly likeable they are compared to some of the delightful oddballs he hangs around with. Lawr corrals his usual cast of all-star support—including members of the Fembots and Hylozoists and horn arrangements by Feuermusik’s Jeremy Strachan—but the real attraction here is Lawr’s finest collection of melodic, rootsy pop songwriting to date, powered by more piano than in the past. His increasingly poetic pen allows him to write about James Loney, Columbine and foreign policy blowback without ever getting into heavy-handed specifics. If there’s a flaw here, it’s that Lawr’s subdued vocals don’t sound as excited about the material as they should. Belt it out, boy! (September 27, 2007)
RED STICK RAMBLERS - Made in the Shade (Sugar Hill)
***
Red Stick Ramblers deliver hot twin-fiddle Louisiana action with touches of Western swing, Owen Bradley balladry and—on the closing epic “Smeckled Suite”—some sunbaked Spanish guitars that come off like early Calexico jamming with Dirty Three. No need for a hipster alert, however, as Red Stick Ramblers are traditionalists through and through, right down to the front porch recording of the inevitable instrumental entitled “Katrina.” They can be squeaky clean country folk when they wanna be, but Red Stick Ramblers sound best when they fire up the fiddles at the forefront and “Laisse Les Cajuns Danser.” (November 22, 2007)
VARIOUS - David Shrigley’s Worried Noodles (Tomlab)
****
Who is David Shrigley, and why does he deserve a tribute from 39 awesome oddballs culled from the international pop underground? He’s a Glaswegian poet who did the artwork for the latest Deerhoof album—their Shrigley collab “You Dog” is the only non-exclusive track here—but he also once put out an LP-sized collection of songless lyrics, which have now found a musical home thanks to the likes of Franz Ferdinand, David Byrne, Trans Am, Grizzly Bear, and Torontonians Final Fantasy and Hank. But the baffling, childlike lyrics barely matter when this two-CD set serves as the best mix tape of 2007. (November 22, 2007)
BOB SNIDER - A Maze in Greys (Borealis)
***
It’s been five years since we last heard from Kensington Market folkie Bob Snider. He’s been living in Nova Scotia and seemingly spending more time writing books about his craft (On Songwriting, On Performance) than the songs that have made him so beloved among his peers. Once again, producer David Baxter assembles Toronto’s top session players—including old Snider pal Bob Wiseman—to provide textural colour to Snider’s songs, which run the risk of sanding off his quirkier edges of yore. They certainly add plenty, but Snider himself sounds distracted; the solo moments here are what really shine. (written for the November 22, 2007 issue, though has yet to run)
STARS - In Our Bedroom After the War (Arts and Crafts)
****
Stars have always been more convincing in the bedroom than on the battlefield, much better at romance than rocking out. This time out, however, all their ambitions come into complete focus, especially on the knockout first half. First single “Take Me to the Riot” is such a triumph of a pop song—particularly the anthemic 5/4 chorus—that it’s almost easy to overlook Torq Campbell’s consistently cheap use of revolutionary imagery to inject his lyrics with weight (“Barricades,” the title track). Even if his bleeding heart is in the right place, his lyrical characters come off like radical chic voyeurs parading off-Broadway with carefully torn Che t-shirts; thankfully the music itself rises above that. While Campbell is alternately infuriating and totally charming, his foil Amy Millan exudes warmth and cool at every turn. Yet this isn’t merely a singers’ album: the deft rhythm section adds twists and turns; the string arrangements and keyboards exude elegance; the production magnifies both the sweeping grandiosity and the intimate details. The title track speaks of reinvention, but this is a distillation of everything Stars have been working towards for years; the only thing being reborn is our own expectations. (September 20, 2007)
BOBB TRIMBLE - Harvest of Dreams; Iron Curtain Innocence (Secretly Canadian)
**
Why anyone would ever have paid $1500 for an original vinyl copy of these albums only proves that obscurity trumps quality in the rabbit hole of the record collecting world. Of course, Trimble has a great back story: he was a bedroom four-tracker in small-town Massachusetts in the early 80s, running his voice through Leslie speakers, employing 12-year-old boys to be his band and reveling in all things fragile and flanged. But just because he’s an unheralded loner specializing in limp psychedelic folk-pop doesn’t mean that his music speaks to the “ugliness of the Reaganesque suburban nightmare,” as the unintentionally hilarious liner notes suggest. Wonderfully wacko and beautiful moments do exist here, but not enough to exonerate this exhumation. (November 22, 2007)
TURBO FRUITS - s/t (Ecstatic Peace)
**
This is a side project for Be Your Own Pet’s Jonas Stein, an upstart Nashville teen band blessed with that ever-so-rare gift of making it seem like an original and exciting idea to start a punk band. Lightning doesn’t often strike the same lucky sod twice, and the fact that Stein is a less charismatic vocalist than BYOP’s Jemina Pearl is the first strike against him. The limitations of a guitar/drums duo is the second. But the Turbo Fruits have their share of charms, squeezing out a sludgy power that draws more directly from proto-punk 60s garage, at times with subtle dashes of country and rockabilly that reflects their home state. They’re not engaging enough to forgive some of the more forgettable material, but they score with “Fight This!”—which is either about the health issues of 9/11 rescue workers, endlessly extended tours of duty for soldiers in Iraq, or none of the above: “Gotta go for the government/ haven’t even recovered yet/ my sinus is filled with shit/ there’s red, white and blue in my spit.” (September 13, 2007)
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Eyeful of reviews, fall 07 p1
In the interest of further housecleaning, here are some reviews from Eye Weekly that I've neglected to post this past fall. Because their website is still under major construction, the full text is included here, with a link to the unGooglable original review.
More will follow tomorrow, with some live reviews after that.
In alphabetical order, today's serving includes: Bella, Mark Berube, Buck 65, Vic Chesnutt, Imani Coppola, Cuff the Duke, Dragonette, Duran Duran, Fiery Furnaces, Frightened Rabbit, Teki Latex, Bettye Lavette.
BELLA
No One Will Know
(Mint)
**
Vancouver: the city where the 80s never die, especially new wave pop performed by excitable twentysomethings who just saw Pretty in Pink and bought their first synthesizer. To their credit, Bella do this better than most, and actually sound like they could evolve into a multi-dimensional band—as opposed to, say, The Organ, who mastered a rut and never got out of it. But unlike similar retro-miners The Rosebuds or Imperial Teen, who guest here—both of whom remember the 80s first-hand—Bella are little more than promising youngsters. After forty minutes of treading water, nothing gets much deeper here than the title track’s typically non-committal teenage lyrics: “Don’t look at me that way and I won’t look at you/ and no one will know.” Maybe once they’re comfortable enough to make eye contact, Bella will make some real connections. (October 18, 2007)
MARK BERUBE
What the River Gave the Boat
(Kwalu)
****
Vancouver singer/songwriter Mark Berube is much more than another well-traveled dapper dude. Exhibit A: the guy can write a song called “Pretty Little Bird” that is nowhere near as naïve and nauseating as the title suggests. Instead, that track—like many on this album—contains wonderful images and narrative portraiture that suggests he’s studied closely at the feet of Mr. Waits and Mr. Cohen. Berube’s lyrical travels take him to Montreal, Berlin, Vancouver, New York City, Africa and an unnamed battleground on the poignant “War Without End,” which dodges any modern-day specifics and sounds appropriately timeless. Musically, on the other hand, he’s usually at home, parked on his piano stool and conjuring classic cabaret melodies with a rainy West Coast morning outside his door. His good luck streak continues with elegant string arrangements, sympathetic production and a soaring voice that reminds us what Rufus and Hawksley would sound like if they weren’t such drama queens. (September 13, 2007)
BUCK 65
Situation
(Warner)
****
After years of exploring in and outside of hip-hop, Situation marks Buck 65’s return to the genre, with the ace help of Haligonian DJ/producer Skratch Bastid. Yet on the mic, Buck’s decidedly non-hip-hop hobo fogey MC persona persists, this time waxing not-so-nostalgic for the year 1957, a year that he argues defined the cultural shift in post-war America. He has a variety of reasons; many of them seem to stem directly from The Notorious Bettie Page—and not specifics of her subversion or a parade of “scum bags and cum rags,” but actual dialogue from the film. Even without this concept, an occasionally breathless Buck is on top of his lyrical and musical game, incorporating his increasingly catholic tastes with consistently bangin’ Bastid beats. Situation might be his most accessible album to date, but that’s just because he keeps getting better. This career artist continues to be in a class of his own. (October 25, 2007)
VIC CHESNUTT
North Star Deserter
(Constellation)
**
Everything about this album works beautifully—except Chesnutt’s songs themselves. On his thirteenth studio album, the Georgia songwriter shacked up in Montreal with the Constellation Records posse, who provide tasteful and eerie backing to some of Chesnutt’s best vocal performances in years, as coaxed by engineer Howard Bilerman and producer (and Fugazi filmmaker) Jem Cohen. This makes it the best album by Constellation house band A Silver Mt. Zion, but sadly—as has been true for the last ten years or so—Chesnutt’s material doesn’t live up to his early-90s heights, leaving us with an hour of tuneless dirge. Hopefully the experience will kickstart his muse and warrant a return visit; it would be a shame to waste this opportunity. (November 22, 2007)
IMANI COPPOLA
The Black & White Album
(Ipecac)
***
It’s unlikely anyone remembers Imani Coppola as a one-hit youngster who sang “Legend of a Cowgirl” over a Donovan sample in 1997. For those that do, she’s still a savvy eclecticist whose juvenile lyrics distract from her skills as a pop songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She’s a convincing soul singer (“Let It Kill You”), dabbles in dirty hip-hop (“Keys 2 Your Ass”) and has punk rock sass to spare on the bi-racial rant “Woke Up White.” Now that she’s been rescued from obscurity by Mike Patton—who not only signed her, but employs her as a violinist in Peeping Tom—her genre hopping will reach more receptive ears than the suits who dumped her a decade ago. (November 22, 2007)
CUFF THE DUKE
Sidelines of the City
(Hardwood/Universal)
****
On the opening track “If I Live Or If I Die,” Cuff the Duke singer Wayne Petti clearly has mortality on his mind – both his own, and likely that of his tumultuous band as well. After Petti's refreshing solo acoustic album followed up CTD's flawed but inexplicably popular second album, he and remaining original member Paul Lowman now bounce back with a renewed sense of purpose. Sidelines sparkles with life, succeeding everywhere that the last attempt failed – especially when they merge piano pop with their penchant for guitar epics, which they nail here on “Surging Revival” and “Failure to Some.” Their rootsier leanings lose any final traces of hokiness, and the Calexico-esque horns are a nice touch on the unfortunately titled “Ballad of the Tired Old Man.” They even pull off the unthinkable by bestowing some romantic nostalgia to their hometown on “Rossland Square.” It all adds up to what could be a breakthrough – their Oshawa Tree, if you will. (October 18, 2007) (My cover story on the band in this week's paper can be found here.)
DRAGONETTE
Galore
(Universal)
*
Pop music is never as easy as it looks. And just because ex-folkie Martina Sorbara is now dressing the part of a teen idol doesn’t mean she can blow bubblegum. Any Torontonian with prior knowledge of Sorbara’s past (and partner Dan Kurtz’s time with The New Deal) is likely to charge Dragonette with shameless popportunism. But ultimately it’s the lame material that slays Dragonette: most of these tracks are indistinguishable from Hilary Duff’s attempts to sound “edgy.” Sometimes a pop makeover can invigorate a career (see: Nelly Furtado), and Dragonette’s preliminary UK success suggests that they’re already fooling one market. The only time Sorbara sounds remotely convincing is when she sings: “Wash me/ god, I want to get this off me/ if you want to love me, stop me.” (September 20, 2007)
DURAN DURAN
Red Carpet Massacre
(Epic/Sony BMG)
*
Ever since they reformed the original line-up, all the dough they raked in on those reunion tours probably went towards hiring the triumvirate that brought sexy back: Danjahandz, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake himself. All three men sound like they were hired just to be namedropped in the marketing material; Timberlake, for example, didn’t seem to have the guts to cut off Andy Taylor’s awful guitar solo on “Falling Down.” Timbaland’s vocal cameos might be embarrassing, but at least they distract from the fact that no one bothered to auto-tune Simon LeBon’s increasingly wretched voice. It’s not a coincidence that the best track here is a Danjahandz instrumental; unfortunately for Duran Duran, that’s not going to sell a lot of concert tickets. (November 15, 2007)
FIERY FURNACES
Widow City
(Thrill Jockey)
***
Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger joke that they wrote this new album with the help of a Ouija board. For better and worse, it certainly sounds like it. Musically, the Friedbergers filter Wings and Zeppelin riffs and rhythms through synths and Chamberlain organs, with results that are consistently fascinating and ridiculously unpredictable, a crash course of tangential fantasies that miraculously flow together thanks in part to drummer Robert D’Amico and Eleanor’s convincing charisma. Unfortunately, Matthew uses the same scattershot approach to unleash a confounding lyrical onslaught for his sister to sing, which at times crowds out almost any pleasure to be found. When she’s denied a melody, the frantic words-per-minute rate is a waste of Eleanor’s increasingly versatile range. Thankfully, Widow City mostly sticks to the unlikely sweetness of 2006’s Bitter Tea—especially on the bonafide pop song “Ex-Guru,” which new labelmate David Byrne has already covered. (October 18, 2007)
FRIGHTENED RABBIT
Sing the Greys
(Fat Cat)
*
These are certainly greys, all right. This timid band of Glaswegians wield beige and banal indie rock guitars that try to prop up flaccid melodies and arrangements that shouldn’t have made it past the basement. This isn’t even fey enough to be friendly for the cardigan crowd. Even the titles here will have you instantly counting sheep: “Be Less Rude,” “Music Now” and, of course, “Yawns.” More offensive than Frightened Rabbit itself is the fact that the usually reliable Fat Cat Records has been signing even more snoozers like this (Tom Brosseau, David Karsten Daniels). (November 22, 2007)
TEKI LATEX
Party La Plasir
(EMI)
*
Teki Latex, known to some as an MC in franco hip-hop kings TTC, deserves one star for hiring Feistian producers Gonzales and Renaud Letang to navigate his foray into commercial pop music. Decked out in the most garish neon colours imaginable—as seen in the video for “Les matins de Paris”—the tone deaf Teki has zero personality as a pop singer on titles like “Disco dance with you” and “J’aime la pop music.” He enlists Feist to hide under her Peaches-sidekick alias Bitch Lap Lap, rapping in French and chanting: “The shit is the ish/ the ish is the shit.” Were it not for that stunt casting, it’s highly unlikely this would ever have been exported outside of France. (November 22, 2007)
BETTYE LAVETTE
The Scene of the Crime
(Anti/Epitaph)
**
The crime in question here is how this ended up being such a waste of time. Bettye LaVette is a 61-year old soul singer who isn’t on a comeback trail; she’s still arriving after languishing in obscurity after scoring one teenage hit in 1962. In 1972, she would record her debut album at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio for Atlantic Records—who promptly shelved the album. (It finally surfaced on a French label in 2002.) This new album pairs her with the Drive-By Truckers, whose Patterson Hood grew up at Muscle Shoals, where his father was a co-owner and bassist. Recorded back at Muscle Shoals, LaVette herself is in killer form, snarling like a spurned sexpot (and recalling recent reissues by fellow underdog Betty Davis). Yet everyone around her is far too reserved—intimidated, even. Instead of lighting a fire under her ass, they leave her dramatic vocals hanging out to dry on top of deadly dull bed tracks. The only time they connect is on the autobiographical “Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette),” which she co-writes with Hood. Otherwise, when she sings “You Don’t Know Me At All,” you have to wonder how intently she’s looking at the band. (September 20, 2007)
More will follow tomorrow, with some live reviews after that.
In alphabetical order, today's serving includes: Bella, Mark Berube, Buck 65, Vic Chesnutt, Imani Coppola, Cuff the Duke, Dragonette, Duran Duran, Fiery Furnaces, Frightened Rabbit, Teki Latex, Bettye Lavette.
BELLA
No One Will Know
(Mint)
**
Vancouver: the city where the 80s never die, especially new wave pop performed by excitable twentysomethings who just saw Pretty in Pink and bought their first synthesizer. To their credit, Bella do this better than most, and actually sound like they could evolve into a multi-dimensional band—as opposed to, say, The Organ, who mastered a rut and never got out of it. But unlike similar retro-miners The Rosebuds or Imperial Teen, who guest here—both of whom remember the 80s first-hand—Bella are little more than promising youngsters. After forty minutes of treading water, nothing gets much deeper here than the title track’s typically non-committal teenage lyrics: “Don’t look at me that way and I won’t look at you/ and no one will know.” Maybe once they’re comfortable enough to make eye contact, Bella will make some real connections. (October 18, 2007)
MARK BERUBE
What the River Gave the Boat
(Kwalu)
****
Vancouver singer/songwriter Mark Berube is much more than another well-traveled dapper dude. Exhibit A: the guy can write a song called “Pretty Little Bird” that is nowhere near as naïve and nauseating as the title suggests. Instead, that track—like many on this album—contains wonderful images and narrative portraiture that suggests he’s studied closely at the feet of Mr. Waits and Mr. Cohen. Berube’s lyrical travels take him to Montreal, Berlin, Vancouver, New York City, Africa and an unnamed battleground on the poignant “War Without End,” which dodges any modern-day specifics and sounds appropriately timeless. Musically, on the other hand, he’s usually at home, parked on his piano stool and conjuring classic cabaret melodies with a rainy West Coast morning outside his door. His good luck streak continues with elegant string arrangements, sympathetic production and a soaring voice that reminds us what Rufus and Hawksley would sound like if they weren’t such drama queens. (September 13, 2007)
BUCK 65
Situation
(Warner)
****
After years of exploring in and outside of hip-hop, Situation marks Buck 65’s return to the genre, with the ace help of Haligonian DJ/producer Skratch Bastid. Yet on the mic, Buck’s decidedly non-hip-hop hobo fogey MC persona persists, this time waxing not-so-nostalgic for the year 1957, a year that he argues defined the cultural shift in post-war America. He has a variety of reasons; many of them seem to stem directly from The Notorious Bettie Page—and not specifics of her subversion or a parade of “scum bags and cum rags,” but actual dialogue from the film. Even without this concept, an occasionally breathless Buck is on top of his lyrical and musical game, incorporating his increasingly catholic tastes with consistently bangin’ Bastid beats. Situation might be his most accessible album to date, but that’s just because he keeps getting better. This career artist continues to be in a class of his own. (October 25, 2007)
VIC CHESNUTT
North Star Deserter
(Constellation)
**
Everything about this album works beautifully—except Chesnutt’s songs themselves. On his thirteenth studio album, the Georgia songwriter shacked up in Montreal with the Constellation Records posse, who provide tasteful and eerie backing to some of Chesnutt’s best vocal performances in years, as coaxed by engineer Howard Bilerman and producer (and Fugazi filmmaker) Jem Cohen. This makes it the best album by Constellation house band A Silver Mt. Zion, but sadly—as has been true for the last ten years or so—Chesnutt’s material doesn’t live up to his early-90s heights, leaving us with an hour of tuneless dirge. Hopefully the experience will kickstart his muse and warrant a return visit; it would be a shame to waste this opportunity. (November 22, 2007)
IMANI COPPOLA
The Black & White Album
(Ipecac)
***
It’s unlikely anyone remembers Imani Coppola as a one-hit youngster who sang “Legend of a Cowgirl” over a Donovan sample in 1997. For those that do, she’s still a savvy eclecticist whose juvenile lyrics distract from her skills as a pop songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She’s a convincing soul singer (“Let It Kill You”), dabbles in dirty hip-hop (“Keys 2 Your Ass”) and has punk rock sass to spare on the bi-racial rant “Woke Up White.” Now that she’s been rescued from obscurity by Mike Patton—who not only signed her, but employs her as a violinist in Peeping Tom—her genre hopping will reach more receptive ears than the suits who dumped her a decade ago. (November 22, 2007)
CUFF THE DUKE
Sidelines of the City
(Hardwood/Universal)
****
On the opening track “If I Live Or If I Die,” Cuff the Duke singer Wayne Petti clearly has mortality on his mind – both his own, and likely that of his tumultuous band as well. After Petti's refreshing solo acoustic album followed up CTD's flawed but inexplicably popular second album, he and remaining original member Paul Lowman now bounce back with a renewed sense of purpose. Sidelines sparkles with life, succeeding everywhere that the last attempt failed – especially when they merge piano pop with their penchant for guitar epics, which they nail here on “Surging Revival” and “Failure to Some.” Their rootsier leanings lose any final traces of hokiness, and the Calexico-esque horns are a nice touch on the unfortunately titled “Ballad of the Tired Old Man.” They even pull off the unthinkable by bestowing some romantic nostalgia to their hometown on “Rossland Square.” It all adds up to what could be a breakthrough – their Oshawa Tree, if you will. (October 18, 2007) (My cover story on the band in this week's paper can be found here.)
DRAGONETTE
Galore
(Universal)
*
Pop music is never as easy as it looks. And just because ex-folkie Martina Sorbara is now dressing the part of a teen idol doesn’t mean she can blow bubblegum. Any Torontonian with prior knowledge of Sorbara’s past (and partner Dan Kurtz’s time with The New Deal) is likely to charge Dragonette with shameless popportunism. But ultimately it’s the lame material that slays Dragonette: most of these tracks are indistinguishable from Hilary Duff’s attempts to sound “edgy.” Sometimes a pop makeover can invigorate a career (see: Nelly Furtado), and Dragonette’s preliminary UK success suggests that they’re already fooling one market. The only time Sorbara sounds remotely convincing is when she sings: “Wash me/ god, I want to get this off me/ if you want to love me, stop me.” (September 20, 2007)
DURAN DURAN
Red Carpet Massacre
(Epic/Sony BMG)
*
Ever since they reformed the original line-up, all the dough they raked in on those reunion tours probably went towards hiring the triumvirate that brought sexy back: Danjahandz, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake himself. All three men sound like they were hired just to be namedropped in the marketing material; Timberlake, for example, didn’t seem to have the guts to cut off Andy Taylor’s awful guitar solo on “Falling Down.” Timbaland’s vocal cameos might be embarrassing, but at least they distract from the fact that no one bothered to auto-tune Simon LeBon’s increasingly wretched voice. It’s not a coincidence that the best track here is a Danjahandz instrumental; unfortunately for Duran Duran, that’s not going to sell a lot of concert tickets. (November 15, 2007)
FIERY FURNACES
Widow City
(Thrill Jockey)
***
Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger joke that they wrote this new album with the help of a Ouija board. For better and worse, it certainly sounds like it. Musically, the Friedbergers filter Wings and Zeppelin riffs and rhythms through synths and Chamberlain organs, with results that are consistently fascinating and ridiculously unpredictable, a crash course of tangential fantasies that miraculously flow together thanks in part to drummer Robert D’Amico and Eleanor’s convincing charisma. Unfortunately, Matthew uses the same scattershot approach to unleash a confounding lyrical onslaught for his sister to sing, which at times crowds out almost any pleasure to be found. When she’s denied a melody, the frantic words-per-minute rate is a waste of Eleanor’s increasingly versatile range. Thankfully, Widow City mostly sticks to the unlikely sweetness of 2006’s Bitter Tea—especially on the bonafide pop song “Ex-Guru,” which new labelmate David Byrne has already covered. (October 18, 2007)
FRIGHTENED RABBIT
Sing the Greys
(Fat Cat)
*
These are certainly greys, all right. This timid band of Glaswegians wield beige and banal indie rock guitars that try to prop up flaccid melodies and arrangements that shouldn’t have made it past the basement. This isn’t even fey enough to be friendly for the cardigan crowd. Even the titles here will have you instantly counting sheep: “Be Less Rude,” “Music Now” and, of course, “Yawns.” More offensive than Frightened Rabbit itself is the fact that the usually reliable Fat Cat Records has been signing even more snoozers like this (Tom Brosseau, David Karsten Daniels). (November 22, 2007)
TEKI LATEX
Party La Plasir
(EMI)
*
Teki Latex, known to some as an MC in franco hip-hop kings TTC, deserves one star for hiring Feistian producers Gonzales and Renaud Letang to navigate his foray into commercial pop music. Decked out in the most garish neon colours imaginable—as seen in the video for “Les matins de Paris”—the tone deaf Teki has zero personality as a pop singer on titles like “Disco dance with you” and “J’aime la pop music.” He enlists Feist to hide under her Peaches-sidekick alias Bitch Lap Lap, rapping in French and chanting: “The shit is the ish/ the ish is the shit.” Were it not for that stunt casting, it’s highly unlikely this would ever have been exported outside of France. (November 22, 2007)
BETTYE LAVETTE
The Scene of the Crime
(Anti/Epitaph)
**
The crime in question here is how this ended up being such a waste of time. Bettye LaVette is a 61-year old soul singer who isn’t on a comeback trail; she’s still arriving after languishing in obscurity after scoring one teenage hit in 1962. In 1972, she would record her debut album at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio for Atlantic Records—who promptly shelved the album. (It finally surfaced on a French label in 2002.) This new album pairs her with the Drive-By Truckers, whose Patterson Hood grew up at Muscle Shoals, where his father was a co-owner and bassist. Recorded back at Muscle Shoals, LaVette herself is in killer form, snarling like a spurned sexpot (and recalling recent reissues by fellow underdog Betty Davis). Yet everyone around her is far too reserved—intimidated, even. Instead of lighting a fire under her ass, they leave her dramatic vocals hanging out to dry on top of deadly dull bed tracks. The only time they connect is on the autobiographical “Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette),” which she co-writes with Hood. Otherwise, when she sings “You Don’t Know Me At All,” you have to wonder how intently she’s looking at the band. (September 20, 2007)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Magnet-ic Yields, fall 07
Reviews today from the fall issue of Magnet, which also contains my feature on Battles.
Most of these appear in the print edition; Bishop Allen is online only; Siouxie got nixed for a Q&A article in the print edition.
DEVENDRA BANHART
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
Authenticity is such a bore. Where is the real Devendra Banhart? Here, he’s Elvis Presley one minute, Iggy Pop the next, and Caetano Veloso most of the time. Often it’s not even clear if that’s still him on lead vocals, during the doo-wop or Nu Yorican soul excursions. Devendra likes playing dress-up, and doesn’t care if you like it or not. Witness the reaction when he emerged from two near-perfect finger-pickin’, flamenco-tinged freaky folk albums as a self-described “White Reggae Troll” whose touring band stunk too much of patchouli for most horrified hipsters.
His last fuller-than-full-length, the sprawling Cripple Creek, was a schizoid, cringe-worthy mess of the good, the bad and the goofy. He’s no less of a ham here, but this time it’s actually funny—never more so than on “Shabop Shalom” where he rhymes “foul mood” with “Talmud” and asks in a doo-wop voice, “Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?” The 70s boogie of “Lover” and full-on gospel of “Saved” are equally joyous and ridiculous. In between, he’s still spins the type of delicate, fragile folk that captivated us in the first place, though now he’s more likely to layer psychedelic atmospherics or link it directly to Brazilian tropicalia. Even his reggae tendencies are redeemed, on the haunting, dubbed-out and minimally percussive “The Other Woman.”
The more he pushes these various personas, the less sense we expect him to make, and the more rewarding he becomes. “I’m scared of ever being born again/ in this form again,” he sings, but what form he’s referring to is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t sound like he’s scared of anything at all. (XL; xlrecordings.com)
BISHOP ALLEN
The Broken String
JENNY HOYSTON
Isle Of
IRON & WINE
The Shepherd’s Dog
CASS MCCOMBS
Dropping the Writ
SIOUXSIE
Mantaray
Most of these appear in the print edition; Bishop Allen is online only; Siouxie got nixed for a Q&A article in the print edition.
DEVENDRA BANHART
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
Authenticity is such a bore. Where is the real Devendra Banhart? Here, he’s Elvis Presley one minute, Iggy Pop the next, and Caetano Veloso most of the time. Often it’s not even clear if that’s still him on lead vocals, during the doo-wop or Nu Yorican soul excursions. Devendra likes playing dress-up, and doesn’t care if you like it or not. Witness the reaction when he emerged from two near-perfect finger-pickin’, flamenco-tinged freaky folk albums as a self-described “White Reggae Troll” whose touring band stunk too much of patchouli for most horrified hipsters.
His last fuller-than-full-length, the sprawling Cripple Creek, was a schizoid, cringe-worthy mess of the good, the bad and the goofy. He’s no less of a ham here, but this time it’s actually funny—never more so than on “Shabop Shalom” where he rhymes “foul mood” with “Talmud” and asks in a doo-wop voice, “Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?” The 70s boogie of “Lover” and full-on gospel of “Saved” are equally joyous and ridiculous. In between, he’s still spins the type of delicate, fragile folk that captivated us in the first place, though now he’s more likely to layer psychedelic atmospherics or link it directly to Brazilian tropicalia. Even his reggae tendencies are redeemed, on the haunting, dubbed-out and minimally percussive “The Other Woman.”
The more he pushes these various personas, the less sense we expect him to make, and the more rewarding he becomes. “I’m scared of ever being born again/ in this form again,” he sings, but what form he’s referring to is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t sound like he’s scared of anything at all. (XL; xlrecordings.com)
BISHOP ALLEN
The Broken String
Two Harvard grads open up their second album expressing trepidation about the dubious business of playing pop music for a living: “You’d think I’d understand that a rock’n’roll band doesn’t mean a blessed thing.” What could be cause for resignation instead emboldens songwriters Justin Rice and Christian Rudder to settle for nothing less than excellence.
Since their graduation from 2003’s Charm School, Bishop Allen spent the ensuing years on a writing spree, writing 56 songs for 12 EPs released in 2006; most of this material is re-recorded from that productive period. In that time, they matured into everything you’d ever want in a joyous pop band: neither twee nor tough, smart but not sarcastic, ornamental without being overbearing and epic when they wanna be. Toy pianos and ukuleles manage to avoid cutesy trappings, as do subtle mariachi moments. Lyrically, the Bishop has an acute eye for observational detail, as on the Zelig-like “Click Click Click Click” or the character studies of “The News From Your Bed” and “Flight 180,” populated by lonely souls crying out for emotional connections.
Coupled with their classic pop smarts, these details give the distinct impression that ten years ago Bishop Allen were carefully studying Wilco’s Being There and Ben Folds Five’s debut album; The Broken String easily takes its place alongside those classics.
(Dead Oceans; www.deadoceans.com)
JENNY HOYSTON
Isle Of
In her day job as singer/guitarist in Erase Errata, Jenny Hoyston practically takes a back seat to her monstrous rhythm section, content to yelp and add scratchy guitar patterns to the no wave groove being thrown down behind her. Yet hiding behind that detached exterior is an artist who actually does know her way around a melody, and on her debut disc under her own name Hoyston proves to be remarkably diverse. No wonder she leaves us dangling with the album title: Isle Of… what? Opening with a Mary Timony-style rocker and a bluesy punk stomp that could be cut from The Gossip’s songbook, Hoyston then moves through acoustic country territory and what sounds like an 80s bedroom collaboration between Anna Domino and ESG. Though this shares some traits with her lo-fi—and comparatively unremarkable—Paradise Island project that preceded this, Isle Of is a full realization of the somewhat timid and tentative moves heard there. “Everyone’s alone,” sings Hoyston, and here she proves that with or without her band, her creative well runs deeper than one might think.
(Southern; www.southern.com)
IRON & WINE
The Shepherd’s Dog
When we first met Sam Beam, it was kind of obvious from his hushed, solitary bedroom recordings that he didn’t get out of the house much. Three young children in the family will do that to you. But after the success of 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days, Beam found himself on the road with a full band—and sometimes much more than that, as witnessed on a carnivalesque tour with Calexico where upwards of a dozen people might be on stage at any given time.
The Shepherd’s Dog finds the normally clean and lean Beam pigging out at the sonic candy store, with vocals run through Leslie speakers, harmoniums blended with slide steel guitars, hand drums and sitars, and backwards tape underscoring pedal steel swells. One track (“Wolves”) sounds like he hired both Bill Laswell and Daniel Lanois and all of their favourite session players for some dub excursions.
It sounds like a lot, yet thankfully in this case more is more, thanks to the ability of returning producer Brian Deck (Califone) to weave these psychedelic layers around Beam’s bluesy song structures, and keeping his harmonies with sister Sarah front and centre. Beam’s lyrics are more imagistic and cryptic than ever (“If Christ came back he would find us in a poker game”), yet that only seems appropriate, considering the beautifully disorienting aural backdrop behind them.
To help avoid this from becoming a total rock redux incarnation of Iron & Wine, Deck also leaves drum kits out of the picture, preferring subtle percussion to ensure that conventional anchors don’t weigh down the explorations. By maintaining his intimacy while armed with the palette full of colours found here, Beam sets himself far apart from the rest of the hush-and-shush crowd. (Sub Pop, www.subpop.com)
CASS MCCOMBS
Dropping the Writ
Cass McCombs doesn’t sit still very often. He’s the kind of troubadour who rides the Greyhound with a few 20-dollar bills in his pocket and little else. He dodges muggers and probing interviewers and anyone else that wants a piece of him. He hears divine voices (“infinity whispers in my ear”) that urge him “onward, Christian songwriter.” But for a guy who spends most of his time on the road reading Gideon’s and auditioning new bandmates, Dropping The Writ is remarkably consistent.
McCombs had an extended stay in London recently, and one wonders if, while there, he was tossed into a time machine set to 1987, recorded during a week of rain and fog with 4AD musicians, and came back home with the master tapes. Unlike, say, The Clientele—a modern band with a direct line to melancholic, pastoral pop of the 60s—McCombs sounds thrice removed: like the Shins interpreting a Robyn Hitchcock cover of the Zombies. Spacious arrangements leave plenty of room for lush layers of vocal harmonies, and—unlike many cloying crooners—McCombs is at his most endearing when he stretches his tenor with minimal effort.
The propulsive opening track “Lionkiller,” with its rolling triplet guitar line, is itching to be mashed up with Battles’ “Atlas.” That’s one of the only immediate thrills found on this album of subdued and subtle pleasures, where the pervasive weightless atmosphere is a deceptive distraction from McCombs’ songwriting strengths. (Domino)
SIOUXSIE
Mantaray
If you’ve heard the opening track and first single “Into a Swan,” you’d be forgiven for thinking that the transformation Siouxsie is singing about has something to do with becoming Shirley Manson’s doppelganger. The song sounds like Garbage, literally—and isn’t half-bad, if for whatever inexplicable reason you happen to be jonesing for some radio-friendly 90s alt-rock.
Once that’s over with, the 50-year old punk and new wave legend makes the kind of transformation you’d always hoped she would: into a sultry Euro chanteuse with more than a few shades of Shirley Bassey, though she’ll always be Siouxsie Sioux. “Here Comes That Day” sounds like something off her own classic Peepshow album, with its stuttering staccato saxophones, rumbling tympani and vampy vocals. That song opens a mid-album hat trick that continues with “Loveless,” driven by chugging metallic guitars, a Bonham beat, malleted percussion, sawing cellos and Massive Attack-style atmospherics.
“If It Doesn’t Kill You” finds Siouxsie chanelling the pathos of a wartime torch singer, counseling her listeners, “Don’t be bitter/ don’t be gloomy”—words that sound more than a tad ironic from the godmother of goth. The rest of the record won’t convert any recovering Evanescence fans, but it sure sounds better than anything Robert Smith has done in the last 15 years. (W14; w14music.com)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
November 07 review round-up
Reviews today from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury, mainstream daily newspapers where I do a weekly consumer guide review column.
In alphabetical order, we have: Federation, Jay-Z, Kevin Michaels, Ghislain Poirier, Prefuse 73, Seal, Sigur Ros, Spiral Beach, Wintersleep, Neil Young.
Not appearing here, but that ran in the paper are: Band of Horses, Bishop Allen, Buck 65, Duran Duran, the Inhabitants, the Most Serene Republic, Sadies, Shaggy, Siouxie, and Peanut Butter Wolf. Different reviews of Buck 65, Bishop Allen, Duran Duran and Siouxie ran in either Eye Weekly or Magnet; those will be posted here shortly. If you work with any of these artists and need a clipping, let me know.
Federation – It’s Whateva (Reprise/Warner)
Now that Timbaland, the Neptunes and Kanye West are all firmly entrenched in the mainstream—where they walk a fine line between gleeful subversion and tired old tricks for the highest pop bidder—there’s a void waiting to be filled by the next great American hip-hop producer who can take things to the next level. So far the safe money should be on Rick Rock, the architect of San Francisco’s hyphy scene and the puppetmaster behind Federation.
The three MCs here are entirely disposable jokers who are too stupid to be offensive; thankfully, that also means they’re easy to ignore, leaving the listener to instead focus on the fat synths, rubbery bass and ominous beats that signify the hyphy sound. Rock only stumbles when he tries to be commercial, like on the sappy Snoop Dogg track “Happy I Met You”; he does, however, pull off some solid electro soul balladry on “When I Was Your Man” and even some shockingly convincing metal crossover on “Black Roses,” featuring Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker.
Rock is the true star here; as for the Federation themselves—well, whateva. (November 1, 2007)
Jay-Z – American Gangster (Roc-a-fella/Universal)
Now that he’s the richest man in hip-hop—as well as president and CEO of DefJam Records—Jay-Z is nothing if not a shrewd marketer. Linking himself to the streetwise story of Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas is undoubtedly a bid to bolster the gangster persona of this now-respectable mainstream MC. This is not the soundtrack to the new star-studded Lucas biopic of the same title, though Jay-Z claims that each song is based on a scene from the film; snippets of dialogue can be heard throughout.
The story of Lucas—much like most of the less cartoonish aspects of gangsta rap—argues that criminal culture is one of the only options for impoverished African-Americans to buy into the American dream. Whether this is still relevant 50 years after the beginning of desegregation is subject for debate. But in an era when corporate cronyism and outright deception are government policy, the glorification of gangster culture as a metaphor for American life—found everywhere from The Sopranos and The Wire to The Clipse and 50 Cent—is more timely than ever.
In returning to this subject matter, Jay-Z pens some of his more memorable lines in years, particularly when he gets into the “genesis of the nemesis,” recalling his broken home and Brooklyn youth. But he also embodies the nihilism inherent in Bush-era America, where every criminal is quick to absolve himself of responsibility. Everything can be rationalized as being a product of the environment.
For starters, Jay-Z is not ready to be a scapegoat in the ghetto language debates sparked by the Don Imus incident earlier this year. He’s unrepentant for the self-loathing that his language reflects back to his own community—and others, as the Imus confusion pointed out. “I missed that part/ Where it stopped being about Imus/ What do my lyrics got to do with this sh*t?” he asks, like an innocent bystander, not the cultural icon he is. “Are you saying what I’m spittin’/ is worse than these celebutantes showing they kitten? You kiddin’… / Let’s stop the bullsh*tting/ ‘til we all without sin/ let’s quit the pulpit-ing.”
Right—so unless everyone is without sin, we all might as well go on sinning. It’s a thought echoed by MC David Banner, who has openly attacked America’s black leadership—especially Al Sharpton—for not solving every problem that faces black youth today, essentially arguing that the persistence of racism in America is the fault of the previous generation. Banner wrote in a statement: “This life we are continuing to live was handed to us by the people before us who didn’t do much to clean it up.” Ghetto life is what it is—it’s not the kids’ fault. Blame it on the parents.
Jay-Z takes this and runs with it: “We ain’t thugs for the sake of being thugs/ nobody do that where we grew up, nigga, duh… / You ain’t gimme forty acres and a mule/ so I got my Glock 40, now I’m cool/ And if Al Sharpton is speakin’ for me/ somebody get him the word/ and tell him I remove the curses/ if he can tell me our schools gon’ be perfect/ When Jena Six don’t exist/ tell him that’s when I’ll stop sayin’ ‘bitch.’”
When trying to tie in his own story with that of Lucas, Jay-Z backfires a bit when he goes on an anti-snitching screed on “No Hook”; after all, Lucas only served 12 years of his 70-year sentence—many believe it’s because Lucas himself started talking to police. Just like any gangster, Jay-Z doesn’t have any trouble stretching the truth to his own ends. (November 8, 2007)
Kevin Michaels – s/t (Downtown/Warner)
This might sound familiar: a cocksure Italian/African-American who plays a mean guitar and wants to mix up his rock and R&B with a spine-tingling falsetto. For young Philadelphia singer Kevin Michael, the comparisons with Prince stop there: instead of being a one-man show, he employs a small army of co-writers and collaborators, and much of this debut album doesn’t rise above pedestrian songs along the lines of “Liquid Lava Love” and “Hood Buzzin’,” despite guests such as Q-Tip and Lupe Fiasco. Michaels’ lyrics are at times downright embarrassing: “Rent is racked up and my toilet is backed up/ Damn, wish I could flush the drama away.”
Yet he does show plenty of promise, mainly because of his elastic voice, which shows all of the range of his labelmate Cee-Lo of Gnarls Barkley. And he also boasts two great singles, “We All Want the Same Thing” and “It Don’t Make Any Difference To Me”; each of them appears here twice, once in highly produced pop version with a guest MC, and then again as a low-key acoustic number. It’s too bad all his talent goes into those two songs. Next time out we’ll be expecting a lot more. (November 1, 2007)
Ghislain Poirier – No Ground Under (Ninja Tune/Outside)
The term “urban music” has always been a bizarre, unnecessary code word for hip-hop and R&B. Other than the weird racial politics behind this, it’s a waste of a perfectly good descriptor. Montreal’s Ghislain Poirier makes music that speaks directly to the multicultural urban experience, where harsh electronics punctuate the daily rhythm, where speaker-rattling bass is the one sound that unites all. Poirier’s vision of urban paradise is where Brazilian baile funk meets UK “grime” hip-hop meets Jamaican dancehall with Arabic and East Asian melodies on top.
Poirier has never had a problem concocting compelling instrumental narratives, but as a safeguard here he lines up a wealth of obscure MCs to toast on top, including Toronto’s nerdcore Abdominal, Quebec’s joual jokers Omnikrom and Chicago dancehall king Zulu.
No Ground Under is his first release on a reputable international label—a chance for him to give back to the globalized beats he borrows. Soon enough, however, the world will be borrowing from him. (November 15, 2007)
Prefuse 73 – Preparations (Warp/Fusion 3)
In his work as Prefuse 73, Guillermo Scott Herren always came across like an ADD kid who took meticulous delight in splicing up hip-hop and jazz samples, re-arranging them into itchy and glitchy compositions that gave you the jitters. In his considerably more pastoral alterego of Savath + Savalas, Herren makes ambient Spanish folk music that fades into the background all too easily.
On Preparations, however, Herren happily marries the lush arrangements of his other project onto the sliced and diced beats that are the trademark of Prefuse 73. This results in a captivating tension, where beauty proves eternally elusive as Herren continually pulls a bait-and-swith with the rhythm, yanking the carpet out from underneath. It’s no coincidence that tracks are given titles like “Aborted Hug” and “Spaced + Dissonant.” There are times when it sounds like someone turning a radio dial in rhythm—is that necessarily a bad thing?
While his earlier recordings were certainly innovative, this is the first time Herren sounds like he’s finding his own voice as a composer.
And as a bonus to fans, instead of recycling the leftovers into separately sold EPs—as he usually does—they’re included here on a bonus disc devoid of any beats at all, which is a lovely, light dessert after such a dense main course. (November 15, 2007)
Seal – System (Warner)
This suave Grammy magnet clings to the 90s formula that made him a global superstar: Euro pop with techno underpinnings elevated by the occasional folk flourish and Seal’s soulful voice, which promises assurance and salvation in a cold, heartless world. You can’t argue with his System, which even at its most maudlin still stands tall over anything else you’re going to hear in the drugstore aisles. Celebrity watchers will delight in the “Wedding Day” duet with his supermodel wife Heidi Klum, but nothing here tops the opening track, “If It’s In My Mind It’s On My Face,” where the eternally glum and scarfaced singer takes the weight of the world off Bono’s back and carries it himself. It’s overwrought and heavy-handed and has the cheap disco pulse of a World Cup anthem, but only a singer of Seal’s depth could begin to pull it off. (November 22, 2007)
Sigur Ros – Hvarf/Heim (XL)
Icelandic band Sigur Ros never do things normally—like sing in a language they didn’t make up themselves, for starters. Chock it up to their contrarian nature that these two EPs are not the soundtrack to their new concert film, which bears the similar title Heima. The movie was shot during their first-ever full tour of Iceland, where every show was free: from a crowd of 25,000 in Reykjavik to small community halls in remote outposts. During that tour, Sigur Ros played acoustically for the first time ever, which led to the decision to release an EP of that material, accompanied by an electric EP of b-sides and re-recordings of early material.
While the film sounds fascinating, the not-quite-a-soundtrack isn’t exactly essential for anyone but hardcore fans. Sigur Ros music is already sparse, haunting and gorgeous—playing it acoustically doesn’t prove to be revelatory. Likewise, the b-sides—which date from 1995 to 2002—slipped through the quality filter of their full-length albums for a reason; some of this is the most heavy-handed material the normally delicate band has ever made. Save your money for a movie ticket. (November 22, 2007)
Spiral Beach – Ball (Sparks Music)
As we all know, graduating from adolescence is daunting and scary. Toronto’s Spiral Beach hadn’t finished high school when they recorded the exuberant pop of their first album; now that they’re a bit older, the world isn’t as colourful and joyous as it first appeared. The carefree, almost cartoonish nature of early material is replaced with ghosts, black eyes and beasts; the sci-fi vibe remains, and each member’s instrumental prowess gives even the weaker material inventive twists. Despite their talent, Ball falls short of their considerable potential. No worries, though—there’s lots of time. (November 15, 2007)
Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky (Labwork/Sonic Unyon)
Are the 90s over yet? Wintersleep don’t seem to think so. Thankfully, the Halifax quintet have moved on from being moodier Pearl Jam disciples and have started to mine Radiohead’s The Bends—while vocalist Paul Murphy is bearing a remarkable resemblance to Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, with shades of Peter Gabriel on the slightly Celtic alt-rock of “Weighty Ghost.” Thankfully, Wintersleep are more melodic than other crass imitators, and the rhythm section of Loel Campbell and Mike Bigelow—both can often be found moonlighting in Holy Fuck—are several steps above many of their peers. There’s a great band in here somewhere with a voice of its own, though that’s still at least one album away. (November 8, 2007)
Neil Young – Chrome Dreams II (Warner)
It’s hard to believe that someone as prolific as Neil Young still has hours of unreleased material in his vaults—especially considering the dubious quality of many of his official releases. This album is somewhere in between.
Though it features mostly new material—much of which is instantly forgettable—the title is a nod to a 1977 album that Young recorded and scrapped, releasing some salvaged tracks (“Like a Hurricane” and “Pocahontas” among them) on other albums. Don’t bother looking for any kind of thematic thread, however—the title is merely a red herring for geeky fans.
The single reason most of his disciples are excited about this is the presence of “Ordinary People,” a song that dates back to 1988. It’s notable only because it led Young out of the wilderness of much of his 80s output, acting as a bridge into the career renaissance that was 1989’s Freedom.
The 18-minute song is a by-the-numbers portrait of a crumbling consumerist American dream, but Young’s scorching guitar solos—there’s one after each of the nine verses—speak more about paranoia, collapse and frustration than anything he expresses in the actual lyrics. They also explain why he would shortly embark on a mutual love affair with Sonic Youth and the grunge generation.
But even this song is a mixed success: the structure is monotonous, the groove is plodding, and the horn section is a wasteful distraction. No wonder he kept it in the vaults; there are several similar tracks on Freedom—both lyrically and musically—that are far superior.
You have to be a major Neil Young geek to appreciate Chrome Dreams II. Anyone else with the strange urge to buy a new Neil Young album should stick with the 1971 Massey Hall concert released earlier this year. (November 1, 2007)
In alphabetical order, we have: Federation, Jay-Z, Kevin Michaels, Ghislain Poirier, Prefuse 73, Seal, Sigur Ros, Spiral Beach, Wintersleep, Neil Young.
Not appearing here, but that ran in the paper are: Band of Horses, Bishop Allen, Buck 65, Duran Duran, the Inhabitants, the Most Serene Republic, Sadies, Shaggy, Siouxie, and Peanut Butter Wolf. Different reviews of Buck 65, Bishop Allen, Duran Duran and Siouxie ran in either Eye Weekly or Magnet; those will be posted here shortly. If you work with any of these artists and need a clipping, let me know.
Federation – It’s Whateva (Reprise/Warner)
Now that Timbaland, the Neptunes and Kanye West are all firmly entrenched in the mainstream—where they walk a fine line between gleeful subversion and tired old tricks for the highest pop bidder—there’s a void waiting to be filled by the next great American hip-hop producer who can take things to the next level. So far the safe money should be on Rick Rock, the architect of San Francisco’s hyphy scene and the puppetmaster behind Federation.
The three MCs here are entirely disposable jokers who are too stupid to be offensive; thankfully, that also means they’re easy to ignore, leaving the listener to instead focus on the fat synths, rubbery bass and ominous beats that signify the hyphy sound. Rock only stumbles when he tries to be commercial, like on the sappy Snoop Dogg track “Happy I Met You”; he does, however, pull off some solid electro soul balladry on “When I Was Your Man” and even some shockingly convincing metal crossover on “Black Roses,” featuring Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker.
Rock is the true star here; as for the Federation themselves—well, whateva. (November 1, 2007)
Jay-Z – American Gangster (Roc-a-fella/Universal)
Now that he’s the richest man in hip-hop—as well as president and CEO of DefJam Records—Jay-Z is nothing if not a shrewd marketer. Linking himself to the streetwise story of Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas is undoubtedly a bid to bolster the gangster persona of this now-respectable mainstream MC. This is not the soundtrack to the new star-studded Lucas biopic of the same title, though Jay-Z claims that each song is based on a scene from the film; snippets of dialogue can be heard throughout.
The story of Lucas—much like most of the less cartoonish aspects of gangsta rap—argues that criminal culture is one of the only options for impoverished African-Americans to buy into the American dream. Whether this is still relevant 50 years after the beginning of desegregation is subject for debate. But in an era when corporate cronyism and outright deception are government policy, the glorification of gangster culture as a metaphor for American life—found everywhere from The Sopranos and The Wire to The Clipse and 50 Cent—is more timely than ever.
In returning to this subject matter, Jay-Z pens some of his more memorable lines in years, particularly when he gets into the “genesis of the nemesis,” recalling his broken home and Brooklyn youth. But he also embodies the nihilism inherent in Bush-era America, where every criminal is quick to absolve himself of responsibility. Everything can be rationalized as being a product of the environment.
For starters, Jay-Z is not ready to be a scapegoat in the ghetto language debates sparked by the Don Imus incident earlier this year. He’s unrepentant for the self-loathing that his language reflects back to his own community—and others, as the Imus confusion pointed out. “I missed that part/ Where it stopped being about Imus/ What do my lyrics got to do with this sh*t?” he asks, like an innocent bystander, not the cultural icon he is. “Are you saying what I’m spittin’/ is worse than these celebutantes showing they kitten? You kiddin’… / Let’s stop the bullsh*tting/ ‘til we all without sin/ let’s quit the pulpit-ing.”
Right—so unless everyone is without sin, we all might as well go on sinning. It’s a thought echoed by MC David Banner, who has openly attacked America’s black leadership—especially Al Sharpton—for not solving every problem that faces black youth today, essentially arguing that the persistence of racism in America is the fault of the previous generation. Banner wrote in a statement: “This life we are continuing to live was handed to us by the people before us who didn’t do much to clean it up.” Ghetto life is what it is—it’s not the kids’ fault. Blame it on the parents.
Jay-Z takes this and runs with it: “We ain’t thugs for the sake of being thugs/ nobody do that where we grew up, nigga, duh… / You ain’t gimme forty acres and a mule/ so I got my Glock 40, now I’m cool/ And if Al Sharpton is speakin’ for me/ somebody get him the word/ and tell him I remove the curses/ if he can tell me our schools gon’ be perfect/ When Jena Six don’t exist/ tell him that’s when I’ll stop sayin’ ‘bitch.’”
When trying to tie in his own story with that of Lucas, Jay-Z backfires a bit when he goes on an anti-snitching screed on “No Hook”; after all, Lucas only served 12 years of his 70-year sentence—many believe it’s because Lucas himself started talking to police. Just like any gangster, Jay-Z doesn’t have any trouble stretching the truth to his own ends. (November 8, 2007)
Kevin Michaels – s/t (Downtown/Warner)
This might sound familiar: a cocksure Italian/African-American who plays a mean guitar and wants to mix up his rock and R&B with a spine-tingling falsetto. For young Philadelphia singer Kevin Michael, the comparisons with Prince stop there: instead of being a one-man show, he employs a small army of co-writers and collaborators, and much of this debut album doesn’t rise above pedestrian songs along the lines of “Liquid Lava Love” and “Hood Buzzin’,” despite guests such as Q-Tip and Lupe Fiasco. Michaels’ lyrics are at times downright embarrassing: “Rent is racked up and my toilet is backed up/ Damn, wish I could flush the drama away.”
Yet he does show plenty of promise, mainly because of his elastic voice, which shows all of the range of his labelmate Cee-Lo of Gnarls Barkley. And he also boasts two great singles, “We All Want the Same Thing” and “It Don’t Make Any Difference To Me”; each of them appears here twice, once in highly produced pop version with a guest MC, and then again as a low-key acoustic number. It’s too bad all his talent goes into those two songs. Next time out we’ll be expecting a lot more. (November 1, 2007)
Ghislain Poirier – No Ground Under (Ninja Tune/Outside)
The term “urban music” has always been a bizarre, unnecessary code word for hip-hop and R&B. Other than the weird racial politics behind this, it’s a waste of a perfectly good descriptor. Montreal’s Ghislain Poirier makes music that speaks directly to the multicultural urban experience, where harsh electronics punctuate the daily rhythm, where speaker-rattling bass is the one sound that unites all. Poirier’s vision of urban paradise is where Brazilian baile funk meets UK “grime” hip-hop meets Jamaican dancehall with Arabic and East Asian melodies on top.
Poirier has never had a problem concocting compelling instrumental narratives, but as a safeguard here he lines up a wealth of obscure MCs to toast on top, including Toronto’s nerdcore Abdominal, Quebec’s joual jokers Omnikrom and Chicago dancehall king Zulu.
No Ground Under is his first release on a reputable international label—a chance for him to give back to the globalized beats he borrows. Soon enough, however, the world will be borrowing from him. (November 15, 2007)
Prefuse 73 – Preparations (Warp/Fusion 3)
In his work as Prefuse 73, Guillermo Scott Herren always came across like an ADD kid who took meticulous delight in splicing up hip-hop and jazz samples, re-arranging them into itchy and glitchy compositions that gave you the jitters. In his considerably more pastoral alterego of Savath + Savalas, Herren makes ambient Spanish folk music that fades into the background all too easily.
On Preparations, however, Herren happily marries the lush arrangements of his other project onto the sliced and diced beats that are the trademark of Prefuse 73. This results in a captivating tension, where beauty proves eternally elusive as Herren continually pulls a bait-and-swith with the rhythm, yanking the carpet out from underneath. It’s no coincidence that tracks are given titles like “Aborted Hug” and “Spaced + Dissonant.” There are times when it sounds like someone turning a radio dial in rhythm—is that necessarily a bad thing?
While his earlier recordings were certainly innovative, this is the first time Herren sounds like he’s finding his own voice as a composer.
And as a bonus to fans, instead of recycling the leftovers into separately sold EPs—as he usually does—they’re included here on a bonus disc devoid of any beats at all, which is a lovely, light dessert after such a dense main course. (November 15, 2007)
Seal – System (Warner)
This suave Grammy magnet clings to the 90s formula that made him a global superstar: Euro pop with techno underpinnings elevated by the occasional folk flourish and Seal’s soulful voice, which promises assurance and salvation in a cold, heartless world. You can’t argue with his System, which even at its most maudlin still stands tall over anything else you’re going to hear in the drugstore aisles. Celebrity watchers will delight in the “Wedding Day” duet with his supermodel wife Heidi Klum, but nothing here tops the opening track, “If It’s In My Mind It’s On My Face,” where the eternally glum and scarfaced singer takes the weight of the world off Bono’s back and carries it himself. It’s overwrought and heavy-handed and has the cheap disco pulse of a World Cup anthem, but only a singer of Seal’s depth could begin to pull it off. (November 22, 2007)
Sigur Ros – Hvarf/Heim (XL)
Icelandic band Sigur Ros never do things normally—like sing in a language they didn’t make up themselves, for starters. Chock it up to their contrarian nature that these two EPs are not the soundtrack to their new concert film, which bears the similar title Heima. The movie was shot during their first-ever full tour of Iceland, where every show was free: from a crowd of 25,000 in Reykjavik to small community halls in remote outposts. During that tour, Sigur Ros played acoustically for the first time ever, which led to the decision to release an EP of that material, accompanied by an electric EP of b-sides and re-recordings of early material.
While the film sounds fascinating, the not-quite-a-soundtrack isn’t exactly essential for anyone but hardcore fans. Sigur Ros music is already sparse, haunting and gorgeous—playing it acoustically doesn’t prove to be revelatory. Likewise, the b-sides—which date from 1995 to 2002—slipped through the quality filter of their full-length albums for a reason; some of this is the most heavy-handed material the normally delicate band has ever made. Save your money for a movie ticket. (November 22, 2007)
Spiral Beach – Ball (Sparks Music)
As we all know, graduating from adolescence is daunting and scary. Toronto’s Spiral Beach hadn’t finished high school when they recorded the exuberant pop of their first album; now that they’re a bit older, the world isn’t as colourful and joyous as it first appeared. The carefree, almost cartoonish nature of early material is replaced with ghosts, black eyes and beasts; the sci-fi vibe remains, and each member’s instrumental prowess gives even the weaker material inventive twists. Despite their talent, Ball falls short of their considerable potential. No worries, though—there’s lots of time. (November 15, 2007)
Wintersleep – Welcome to the Night Sky (Labwork/Sonic Unyon)
Are the 90s over yet? Wintersleep don’t seem to think so. Thankfully, the Halifax quintet have moved on from being moodier Pearl Jam disciples and have started to mine Radiohead’s The Bends—while vocalist Paul Murphy is bearing a remarkable resemblance to Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, with shades of Peter Gabriel on the slightly Celtic alt-rock of “Weighty Ghost.” Thankfully, Wintersleep are more melodic than other crass imitators, and the rhythm section of Loel Campbell and Mike Bigelow—both can often be found moonlighting in Holy Fuck—are several steps above many of their peers. There’s a great band in here somewhere with a voice of its own, though that’s still at least one album away. (November 8, 2007)
Neil Young – Chrome Dreams II (Warner)
It’s hard to believe that someone as prolific as Neil Young still has hours of unreleased material in his vaults—especially considering the dubious quality of many of his official releases. This album is somewhere in between.
Though it features mostly new material—much of which is instantly forgettable—the title is a nod to a 1977 album that Young recorded and scrapped, releasing some salvaged tracks (“Like a Hurricane” and “Pocahontas” among them) on other albums. Don’t bother looking for any kind of thematic thread, however—the title is merely a red herring for geeky fans.
The single reason most of his disciples are excited about this is the presence of “Ordinary People,” a song that dates back to 1988. It’s notable only because it led Young out of the wilderness of much of his 80s output, acting as a bridge into the career renaissance that was 1989’s Freedom.
The 18-minute song is a by-the-numbers portrait of a crumbling consumerist American dream, but Young’s scorching guitar solos—there’s one after each of the nine verses—speak more about paranoia, collapse and frustration than anything he expresses in the actual lyrics. They also explain why he would shortly embark on a mutual love affair with Sonic Youth and the grunge generation.
But even this song is a mixed success: the structure is monotonous, the groove is plodding, and the horn section is a wasteful distraction. No wonder he kept it in the vaults; there are several similar tracks on Freedom—both lyrically and musically—that are far superior.
You have to be a major Neil Young geek to appreciate Chrome Dreams II. Anyone else with the strange urge to buy a new Neil Young album should stick with the 1971 Massey Hall concert released earlier this year. (November 1, 2007)
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Tinariwen
This week's Eye has an article of mine on Tinariwen, a group of Touareg guitarists whose rebel rocker cred shames that of M.I.A. any day. Founded in the Libyan refugee camps in the early 80s, Tinariwen play traditional Touareg music inspired by Western rock'n'roll, with lyrics of resistance and rebellion that led to their early cassettes to be considered agitprop by the governments of Mali, Algeria and Niger. Several members took part in armed resistance fighting for Touareg autonomy; when a peace treaty was reached in the early 90s, they put down their guns and focused on their guitars.
I first reviewed their record for Eye back in March, when I had this to say in a four-star review:
"You think you got the blues? Try wandering the desert for 27 years as part of a perpetually oppressed population, serving in rebel armies and learning to play guitar with bicycle brake wire. These southern Saharan guitar slingers have every reason to play the blues, but these call-and-response melodies are much too joyful to be mired in the pain of the past. There are obvious stylistic comparisons here to the late Ali Farka Toure, but Tinariwen are rock’n’rollers who love a good wah pedal and Echoplex when the situation requires. One chord is all you need, and sometimes even less: these guitarists have that rare ability to make you feel more with one note than any intricate solo. By the time the backing vocalists start their ecstatic ululating, it’s hard not to join in."
More info can be found here. You should definitely listen to some music here.
Aman Iman is their third proper studio album, and it's reached many ears beyond the usual world music ghettoes. The link to Western music is one reason; the fact that it has better distribution is another. And while the exotic backstory helps inform the music, the music stands alone just fine without it.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this e-mail interview in advance of Tinariwen's first Canadian dates, but I was pleasantly surprised.
They play Toronto's Mod Club on Tuesday, November 20; they're in Sherbrooke, QC on the 21st, Montreal on the 23rd at Club Soda, and Quebec City on the 24th. More tour dates here.
Tinariwen
November 9, 2007
Email interview with Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni
What sort of gigs did you play for the first 15 years?
I only started playing with Tinariwen in the mid 1980s. The group had already been going for about five years. In those days many of our concerts were just very small gatherings with our friends, either in the camp, or out in the bush. They were very basic affairs: not much equipment, no big PA system or lights—just intimate gatherings. After the end of the rebellion, in about 1991 or 1992, we started playing some bigger concerts for the Touareg communities in Bamako, or southern Algeria, and even in Abidjan, which we visited in 1992. But they were very different from the gigs we play now. There were much longer pauses between the songs, and the stage was always full of friends, dancing or singing with us. It almost as if the band wasn't just the musicians on the stage, but the whole audience as well! Some of the fireside singing sessions out in the bush during the rebellion were pretty intense.
Why and when were your cassettes illegal? In which countries were they illegal? Was this because of the political content of the lyrics, or because you were in the rebel army?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tinariwen was already known as a group that was singing about revolt and self-determination for the Touareg people. This didn't make the group very popular with the authorities in Algeria, Mali and Niger. All these countries had a big problem with their Touareg populations at the time, and they didn't like the idea of this revolutionary message being distributed via cassette copies throughout the desert. So if you were caught with a Tinariwen cassette on your person at the time, it made you suspect in the eyes of the authorities and could lead to interrogation or arrest.
What was your first experience playing in Europe like?
It was great actually. The first time we came over was in 1998, at the invitation of the French group Lo'Jo. I came with Hassan, Foy Foy and others. We called ourselves “Azawad” because since [founding member] Ibrahim wasn't with us, we didn't feel it was quite right to call ourselves Tinariwen. We only did a few concerts, in the west of France. It was very friendly, because Lo'Jo and the people around them are so generous and open. So we loved it. And it felt like a triumph to be performing in Europe at last. We'd been dreaming of it for a long, long time.
I know that some people in the band won't be able to come to Canada. How many people are in the core band? Are there members of Tinariwen that you could not play without?
Tinariwen is a very flexible band. Even if one member of the group were to come along and perform a set of songs, it could still be called a Tinariwen concert. This is because we've always been like a collective of singer-songwriters, with a support group of friends and brothers. Even if just one of these singer-songwriters is present, then you're in front of Tinariwen.
Ibrahim, the founder of the group and its main songwriter, decided not to come on this North American tour simply because he had some serious health problems this summer, including a severe recurrence of malaria, and he felt exhausted. He need time at home in the desert to rest.
By the end of the year the group will have performed 136 concerts in 12 months. That's crazy really. It's been very hard for us, and we'd like to do things differently in the future. We need more time at home to rest, to be with friends and family, and to be inspired so that we can create new music. That's essential. This flexibility that Tinariwen has is one of the secrets of the group's survival. It has allowed it to continue existing, even when its members were dispersed all over the desert.
What is the average age of the band? How many are original members?
There are two generations in Tinariwen. There are the founders like Ibrahim and Hassan who are in their mid to late 40s. Then there are people like me, who joined in the mid 1980s. I'm in my late 30s. Then there are the younger generation, like Said, Eyadou and Intidao, who were all children at the time of rebellion in the early 1990s, and who are now in the 20s. There are two original members who are still with the band, Ibrahim and Hassan.
What kind of direction did [Robert Plant guitarist and Tinariwen producer] Justin Adams give in the studio? How do you think Tinariwen's studio recordings have evolved?
Justin is an old collaborator of ours. He produced our first CD The Radio Tisdas Session with Jean-Paul Romann, who is Lo'Jo's sound engineer. He also really loves and understands West African and desert music. In the studio he made sure that the songs were well arranged, and were the right length. He also picked out little motifs that we needed to develop or emphasize. Then he just tried to get good performances from us. You should also mention Ben Findlay, who was the engineer on the sessions. He's very effective, and knows how to work discreetly but get just the right sound.
Tinariwen's recordings have certainly evolved. Our first album Radio Tisdas was like a snapshot of what we do, raw and unprocessed. Amassakoul was our first attempt to master the studio, but in the end it was a bit of compromise, thanks to our inexperience. Aman Iman was a more mature process, and I think it shows.
How much of the material on Aman Iman is new? How much is based on traditional material? How much has been in your repertoire for years?
The songs on Aman Iman were written throughout the last 25 years. Songs like “63” and “Tamatant Tilay” are very old, from the early 1980s. Others like “Cler Achel” are only a few years old. There's a traditional core to all our music, but none of the tunes are specifically based on traditional music.
What were some early Western musical influences, other than Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin? Why do you think you connected with those artists, and did you hear any African influence in their music?
Basically, we're all individuals and we all like different music. For example, my taste is for quieter acoustic music. I'm a big fan of country and western, and of artists like Don Williams or Johnny Cash. Others in the band like heavy rock or hip-hop. It's a big soup of different musical influences really. There are some bands like Santana or Dire Straits that were almost universally popular amongst all of us young Touaregs living in exile in the 1980s. We owe a lot to Santana, for example. He taught us a lot about what you can do with a guitar. It seems to me that all rock music has an African gene in there somewhere. Don't you think?
How was your experience at the WOMAD Summer Camp this year in the UK? How easy is it, really, to teach others to play in the Tuareg style?
It was strange because I've never done anything like that before. Basically it was just myself and Andy Morgan, our manager, in a room with about 20 guitarists of different abilities for a whole day. I tried to teach them the principals of how we tune the guitar, and how one string is always the drone, whilst the melody is played on the upper strings. It was very interesting, and it even taught me something about my own music!!
How would you say the Tuareg guitar style differs from other Mali musicians like Ali Farka Toure? Does guitar even figure into traditional Tuareg music, or is it mostly played on ngonis and other instruments?
I think the difference between the Touareg guitar style, and that of other non-Touareg musicians like Ali Farka or Afel Bocoum, is that our style has a very strong element of traditional Touareg music in it, and also plenty of Arabic and Berber music too. This gives it a different shade. But to the uneducated ear it might sound very similar. There's nothing strange about this, because the Touareg and the Songhai have always shared the same geographical space. We're neighbours and culturally we're quite close too. But you have to realize that the guitar is a very new instrument, not only for the Touareg, but for all the people of Mali. It was really Ali Farka Touré who pioneered the idea of playing traditional melodies, which had always been performed on the ngoni or the kora or whatever, on the guitar. We all owe a lot to him.
How many other groups in Mali/Niger/Libya do something similar to yourself? Do you know Group Inerane, who just got a North American release [on Sublime Frequencies]? What do you think the differences between the two of you are?
Oof, there are hundreds of groups now. The Touareg guitar style was invented by Ibrahim and Inteyeden essentially, but now it's played all over the desert. All the young Touareg who play songs on the guitar owe something to them. But this is great, and all of these groups have their own particular approach and style. I haven't heard Inerane's CD so I can't really talk about it. But there are other great groups from Niger and Mali, like Tarbiat, Toumast, Etran Finatawa and the young Tamekrist from Kidal. Hopefully there will be room for all of us in the end.
Is this the first Tinariwen album to feature translated lyrics? If so, why?
Our manager Andy felt it was very important to translate the lyrics this time round, to give people a sense of what we're singing about. Communicating our message is a constant obsession for us, and it's not always easy to do. Even translating the lyrics was very difficult, because there are poetic riches in the original that just can't be conveyed in a translation. We did our best. There were lyric translations on Amassakoul, but this time round we devoted a lot more time to getting it right. But there's still a lot of work to do. It's almost like a project in itself.
Do you think the current rebellion will last as long as the one you took part in? What are the core issues? Do you think they will be easier or more difficult to resolve?
This outbreak is very different from the one that we were involved in, in the early 1990s. Back then Mali was ruled by a very corrupt military dictatorship, and the Touareg had absolutely no voice in government whatsoever. Our home region, around Kidal, was a military no-go zone at the time, abandoned and discarded by the central power in Bamako. So we had everything to fight for, and very little to lose.
This time the conflict is much more complex, with different opinions and different points of view even inside the Touareg community. The basic aims are the same: to get the government to respect the promises that were made in the 1994 National Pact, which are all to do with treating the Touareg fairly, respecting our culture and our specific lifestyle, and investing in our region, especially in terms of education and water infrastructure. The new rebel movement, the ADC, really just wanted to focus the government's mind on the task in hand, and they felt that they needed to do something quite dramatic in order to achieve this.
But now that the new Algiers Accords have been signed, there is a path to peace. The fact that some people are still out there taking hostages and attacking military outposts is all part of this complex situation. But most of us want peace, so that we can concentrate on development.
Do you think a Tuareg homeland is ever possible, or at least autonomy from Mali and Niger? How do you think uranium and oil development will effect this?
I don't think a Touareg homeland is possible at the moment. The central governments are too strong, and they have too much backing from outside. Also, the Touareg themselves don't have enough unity for an independent state to work. But no one knows what the future holds. It's in our interest to be strong and united, because the mineral wealth of the desert will make it a more and more attractive place to external powers, both political and commercial. We don't want to end up like the Ogoni people in the Niger delta. We have to defend our birthright, but it's not easy.
Do you anticipate any problems entering the U.S. after Tuareg rebels attacked a U.S. aircraft in Tinzaouaten last September?
Strangely enough, we've never had any problem getting entry into the USA. I don't know why. I think that the US is trying to be friends with Mali, which it sees as one of the rare Islamic countries that isn't particularly hostile. But the little incident at Tinzaouaten hasn't changed things.
What do you miss most about the desert while you are on tour?
Everything: friends, family, the peace, the solitude, the quiet. When we arrive back in the desert, we're like fish finally being thrown back into the sea. We can breathe again.
I first reviewed their record for Eye back in March, when I had this to say in a four-star review:
"You think you got the blues? Try wandering the desert for 27 years as part of a perpetually oppressed population, serving in rebel armies and learning to play guitar with bicycle brake wire. These southern Saharan guitar slingers have every reason to play the blues, but these call-and-response melodies are much too joyful to be mired in the pain of the past. There are obvious stylistic comparisons here to the late Ali Farka Toure, but Tinariwen are rock’n’rollers who love a good wah pedal and Echoplex when the situation requires. One chord is all you need, and sometimes even less: these guitarists have that rare ability to make you feel more with one note than any intricate solo. By the time the backing vocalists start their ecstatic ululating, it’s hard not to join in."
More info can be found here. You should definitely listen to some music here.
Aman Iman is their third proper studio album, and it's reached many ears beyond the usual world music ghettoes. The link to Western music is one reason; the fact that it has better distribution is another. And while the exotic backstory helps inform the music, the music stands alone just fine without it.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this e-mail interview in advance of Tinariwen's first Canadian dates, but I was pleasantly surprised.
They play Toronto's Mod Club on Tuesday, November 20; they're in Sherbrooke, QC on the 21st, Montreal on the 23rd at Club Soda, and Quebec City on the 24th. More tour dates here.
Tinariwen
November 9, 2007
Email interview with Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni
What sort of gigs did you play for the first 15 years?
I only started playing with Tinariwen in the mid 1980s. The group had already been going for about five years. In those days many of our concerts were just very small gatherings with our friends, either in the camp, or out in the bush. They were very basic affairs: not much equipment, no big PA system or lights—just intimate gatherings. After the end of the rebellion, in about 1991 or 1992, we started playing some bigger concerts for the Touareg communities in Bamako, or southern Algeria, and even in Abidjan, which we visited in 1992. But they were very different from the gigs we play now. There were much longer pauses between the songs, and the stage was always full of friends, dancing or singing with us. It almost as if the band wasn't just the musicians on the stage, but the whole audience as well! Some of the fireside singing sessions out in the bush during the rebellion were pretty intense.
Why and when were your cassettes illegal? In which countries were they illegal? Was this because of the political content of the lyrics, or because you were in the rebel army?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tinariwen was already known as a group that was singing about revolt and self-determination for the Touareg people. This didn't make the group very popular with the authorities in Algeria, Mali and Niger. All these countries had a big problem with their Touareg populations at the time, and they didn't like the idea of this revolutionary message being distributed via cassette copies throughout the desert. So if you were caught with a Tinariwen cassette on your person at the time, it made you suspect in the eyes of the authorities and could lead to interrogation or arrest.
What was your first experience playing in Europe like?
It was great actually. The first time we came over was in 1998, at the invitation of the French group Lo'Jo. I came with Hassan, Foy Foy and others. We called ourselves “Azawad” because since [founding member] Ibrahim wasn't with us, we didn't feel it was quite right to call ourselves Tinariwen. We only did a few concerts, in the west of France. It was very friendly, because Lo'Jo and the people around them are so generous and open. So we loved it. And it felt like a triumph to be performing in Europe at last. We'd been dreaming of it for a long, long time.
I know that some people in the band won't be able to come to Canada. How many people are in the core band? Are there members of Tinariwen that you could not play without?
Tinariwen is a very flexible band. Even if one member of the group were to come along and perform a set of songs, it could still be called a Tinariwen concert. This is because we've always been like a collective of singer-songwriters, with a support group of friends and brothers. Even if just one of these singer-songwriters is present, then you're in front of Tinariwen.
Ibrahim, the founder of the group and its main songwriter, decided not to come on this North American tour simply because he had some serious health problems this summer, including a severe recurrence of malaria, and he felt exhausted. He need time at home in the desert to rest.
By the end of the year the group will have performed 136 concerts in 12 months. That's crazy really. It's been very hard for us, and we'd like to do things differently in the future. We need more time at home to rest, to be with friends and family, and to be inspired so that we can create new music. That's essential. This flexibility that Tinariwen has is one of the secrets of the group's survival. It has allowed it to continue existing, even when its members were dispersed all over the desert.
What is the average age of the band? How many are original members?
There are two generations in Tinariwen. There are the founders like Ibrahim and Hassan who are in their mid to late 40s. Then there are people like me, who joined in the mid 1980s. I'm in my late 30s. Then there are the younger generation, like Said, Eyadou and Intidao, who were all children at the time of rebellion in the early 1990s, and who are now in the 20s. There are two original members who are still with the band, Ibrahim and Hassan.
What kind of direction did [Robert Plant guitarist and Tinariwen producer] Justin Adams give in the studio? How do you think Tinariwen's studio recordings have evolved?
Justin is an old collaborator of ours. He produced our first CD The Radio Tisdas Session with Jean-Paul Romann, who is Lo'Jo's sound engineer. He also really loves and understands West African and desert music. In the studio he made sure that the songs were well arranged, and were the right length. He also picked out little motifs that we needed to develop or emphasize. Then he just tried to get good performances from us. You should also mention Ben Findlay, who was the engineer on the sessions. He's very effective, and knows how to work discreetly but get just the right sound.
Tinariwen's recordings have certainly evolved. Our first album Radio Tisdas was like a snapshot of what we do, raw and unprocessed. Amassakoul was our first attempt to master the studio, but in the end it was a bit of compromise, thanks to our inexperience. Aman Iman was a more mature process, and I think it shows.
How much of the material on Aman Iman is new? How much is based on traditional material? How much has been in your repertoire for years?
The songs on Aman Iman were written throughout the last 25 years. Songs like “63” and “Tamatant Tilay” are very old, from the early 1980s. Others like “Cler Achel” are only a few years old. There's a traditional core to all our music, but none of the tunes are specifically based on traditional music.
What were some early Western musical influences, other than Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin? Why do you think you connected with those artists, and did you hear any African influence in their music?
Basically, we're all individuals and we all like different music. For example, my taste is for quieter acoustic music. I'm a big fan of country and western, and of artists like Don Williams or Johnny Cash. Others in the band like heavy rock or hip-hop. It's a big soup of different musical influences really. There are some bands like Santana or Dire Straits that were almost universally popular amongst all of us young Touaregs living in exile in the 1980s. We owe a lot to Santana, for example. He taught us a lot about what you can do with a guitar. It seems to me that all rock music has an African gene in there somewhere. Don't you think?
How was your experience at the WOMAD Summer Camp this year in the UK? How easy is it, really, to teach others to play in the Tuareg style?
It was strange because I've never done anything like that before. Basically it was just myself and Andy Morgan, our manager, in a room with about 20 guitarists of different abilities for a whole day. I tried to teach them the principals of how we tune the guitar, and how one string is always the drone, whilst the melody is played on the upper strings. It was very interesting, and it even taught me something about my own music!!
How would you say the Tuareg guitar style differs from other Mali musicians like Ali Farka Toure? Does guitar even figure into traditional Tuareg music, or is it mostly played on ngonis and other instruments?
I think the difference between the Touareg guitar style, and that of other non-Touareg musicians like Ali Farka or Afel Bocoum, is that our style has a very strong element of traditional Touareg music in it, and also plenty of Arabic and Berber music too. This gives it a different shade. But to the uneducated ear it might sound very similar. There's nothing strange about this, because the Touareg and the Songhai have always shared the same geographical space. We're neighbours and culturally we're quite close too. But you have to realize that the guitar is a very new instrument, not only for the Touareg, but for all the people of Mali. It was really Ali Farka Touré who pioneered the idea of playing traditional melodies, which had always been performed on the ngoni or the kora or whatever, on the guitar. We all owe a lot to him.
How many other groups in Mali/Niger/Libya do something similar to yourself? Do you know Group Inerane, who just got a North American release [on Sublime Frequencies]? What do you think the differences between the two of you are?
Oof, there are hundreds of groups now. The Touareg guitar style was invented by Ibrahim and Inteyeden essentially, but now it's played all over the desert. All the young Touareg who play songs on the guitar owe something to them. But this is great, and all of these groups have their own particular approach and style. I haven't heard Inerane's CD so I can't really talk about it. But there are other great groups from Niger and Mali, like Tarbiat, Toumast, Etran Finatawa and the young Tamekrist from Kidal. Hopefully there will be room for all of us in the end.
Is this the first Tinariwen album to feature translated lyrics? If so, why?
Our manager Andy felt it was very important to translate the lyrics this time round, to give people a sense of what we're singing about. Communicating our message is a constant obsession for us, and it's not always easy to do. Even translating the lyrics was very difficult, because there are poetic riches in the original that just can't be conveyed in a translation. We did our best. There were lyric translations on Amassakoul, but this time round we devoted a lot more time to getting it right. But there's still a lot of work to do. It's almost like a project in itself.
Do you think the current rebellion will last as long as the one you took part in? What are the core issues? Do you think they will be easier or more difficult to resolve?
This outbreak is very different from the one that we were involved in, in the early 1990s. Back then Mali was ruled by a very corrupt military dictatorship, and the Touareg had absolutely no voice in government whatsoever. Our home region, around Kidal, was a military no-go zone at the time, abandoned and discarded by the central power in Bamako. So we had everything to fight for, and very little to lose.
This time the conflict is much more complex, with different opinions and different points of view even inside the Touareg community. The basic aims are the same: to get the government to respect the promises that were made in the 1994 National Pact, which are all to do with treating the Touareg fairly, respecting our culture and our specific lifestyle, and investing in our region, especially in terms of education and water infrastructure. The new rebel movement, the ADC, really just wanted to focus the government's mind on the task in hand, and they felt that they needed to do something quite dramatic in order to achieve this.
But now that the new Algiers Accords have been signed, there is a path to peace. The fact that some people are still out there taking hostages and attacking military outposts is all part of this complex situation. But most of us want peace, so that we can concentrate on development.
Do you think a Tuareg homeland is ever possible, or at least autonomy from Mali and Niger? How do you think uranium and oil development will effect this?
I don't think a Touareg homeland is possible at the moment. The central governments are too strong, and they have too much backing from outside. Also, the Touareg themselves don't have enough unity for an independent state to work. But no one knows what the future holds. It's in our interest to be strong and united, because the mineral wealth of the desert will make it a more and more attractive place to external powers, both political and commercial. We don't want to end up like the Ogoni people in the Niger delta. We have to defend our birthright, but it's not easy.
Do you anticipate any problems entering the U.S. after Tuareg rebels attacked a U.S. aircraft in Tinzaouaten last September?
Strangely enough, we've never had any problem getting entry into the USA. I don't know why. I think that the US is trying to be friends with Mali, which it sees as one of the rare Islamic countries that isn't particularly hostile. But the little incident at Tinzaouaten hasn't changed things.
What do you miss most about the desert while you are on tour?
Everything: friends, family, the peace, the solitude, the quiet. When we arrive back in the desert, we're like fish finally being thrown back into the sea. We can breathe again.
Friday, November 16, 2007
October 07 review round-up
More files from the mainstream daily papers the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and the Guelph Mercury today.
In alphabetical order: Baby Eagle, Devendra Banhart, Jully Black, Broken Social Scene (Kevin Drew), Chris Brown/Kate Fenner, Chamillionaire, The Go! Team, Joe Henry, Iron & Wine, Joni Mitchell, the Rizdales.
Not appearing here, but that did run in the paper: will.i.am, Stacey Kent, James Blunt, the Acorn, San Serac, Sally Shapiro. If you work for any of these people and need a clipping, let me know.
Baby Eagle – No Blues (Outside)
The Constantines’ Steve Lambke branches out on his second album as Baby Eagle, expanding on the sparse settings that marked his first foray into solo acoustic material. This time, he traveled to to Sackville, NB, to team up with Julie Doiron, members of Shotgun and Jaybird and Feist’s touring band, all of whom provide eerie accompaniment to Lambke’s haunting lyrics. His thin, reedy voice is the litmus test for listeners, especially in such a stripped-down context as opposed to the Constantines’ rock onslaught. It isn’t ideally suited for this material, yet when it cracks—which it does often—it creates an intriguing sense of desperation to songs like "Driving Blind" and the title track. (October 18, 2007)
Devendra Banhart – Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (XL/Beggars)
One must be wary of the artist who thinks they can do everything. Here, Banhart tries on a closet full of new clothes: a young Elvis, a Haight-Ashbury hippie, a snarling psychedelic punk, a Brazilian troubadour, a gospel preacher, a singer in Santana, a spaced-out reggae singer who has lost his drummer.
There is great danger for this to descend into a schizophrenic mess, the work of an egomaniac who doesn’t know when to say no—which, truth be told, was the fate that awaited Banhart’s last album, Cripple Creek. But Thunder Canyon revels in its diversity, and Banhart never takes any of it too seriously. After all, anyone who writes a Jewish doo-wop song called “My Shabop Shalom Baby” can’t be all bad.
Not that he’s always goofing off. The chameleonic Banhart clearly loves all these musical genres without irony, and his songwriting adapts no matter what corner of the world he finds himself in. His spine-tingling vocals are always the focus—even if you’re not always sure that it’s still him on lead vocals. (October 4, 2007; a different review runs in this month's Magnet)
Jully Black – Revival (Universal)
Jully Black has been a star in the making since she was a Toronto high school student guesting on some of that city's hottest hip-hop singles. Her vocal talents have never been questioned, but until now she never had the right material to truly shine on her own—despite the fact that she's written for Destiny's Child and Nas. That changes starting now.
After touring with the Black Eyed Peas several years back, she bonded with their drummer Keith Harris, who produced this, her second major label release and a surefire breakthrough. With Harris at the helm, Black finds the enviable middle ground between neo-soul revivalists like Amy Winehouse and mainstream R&B like Mary J. Blige. Skittering beats, rock guitars, punchy piano riffs and gospel backing vocals all help strike a fine balance between big soul numbers—like the lead single, a cover of Etta James' “Seven Day Fool”—and contemplative ballads such as the socially conscious “Just a Moment” or the tribute to her late sister, “Catch Me When I Fall.”
It's hard to top the opening four songs—which include the feminist reggae anthem Queen and the party-starter DJ Play My Song—but Revival never sags. Soon enough Jully Black will be known for much more for her music rather than being a celebrity correspondent for E-talk Daily. (October 25, 2007)
Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew – Spirit If… (Arts and Crafts/EMI)
The overwhelming amount of talent in Broken Social Scene—which of course includes Feist, Jason Collett, Stars and Apostle of Hustle—threatened to crush the band entirely on their 2005 self-titled album, where an avalanche of sound overwhelmed any sense of direction or solid songwriting.
Co-founder Kevin Drew adopts a much more subtle approach here, allowing tiny details to colour a series of songs that outline his own personal turmoil (read: divorce) of recent years. It’s just as dense as any other Broken Social Scene album, yet everything breathes much easier. Drew doesn’t want to hit you over the head this time out; many of this album’s greatest pleasures are all but inaudible if you’re expecting the epic art rock he’s built his reputation on. It even appears deceptively slight upon initial listens.
Guests include all the usual BSS suspects—including Feist, Stars’ Amy Millan, most of Metric—as well as some personal heroes of Drew’s: Pavement’s Spiral Stairs, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis—and, uh, Tom Cochrane. (Skeptics alert: forget “Life is a Highway”—go back to Red Rider, right up to the “Boy Inside the Man” days.)
Because this is (kind of) a solo album, Drew also prints his lyrics for the first time, and mixes his vocals up front. Unlike his earlier songs—where the abstraction allowed the listener to project whatever they liked onto them—these are simultaneously more direct and yet still leave plenty of room for the listener’s own imagination. He also moves effortlessly from ambient electronics, acoustic folk, propulsive pop and raging rock—and even better, sometimes he makes it all in the same song.
Best of all, Spirit If… is never predictable, even in the carte blanche world of Broken Social Scene. (October 11, 2007)
Chris Brown and the Citizens' Band – Oblivion (chrisbrownmusic.com)
Kate Fenner – Magnet (katefenner.com)
Brown and Fenner's careers have been intertwined for over 20 years now, ever since they were high school students in the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, and then later as a duo. It used to be that Brown was the socially conscious poet and songwriter behind Fenner's rich and resonant voice; as time goes on, Fenner has become a songwriter who can stand on her own and Brown's voice gets better with age.
Now that they're charting separate paths, they still share the same backing band and Brown writes three songs on Fenner's second solo album. One of them is the majestic epic “Paris,” where Fenner delivers one of her finest vocal performances with a Cohen-esque lyric that also stands as one of Brown's best.
He saves a few more knockouts for his own album: the inspirational title track; the gripping political screed “The Gates” (which boasts the opening line, "The rapture came, and it only let them down"); and “Image of a Man,” a powerful ode to the passing of Johnny Cash that features Sarah Harmer on backing vocals. Yet for Brown, it's all or nothing. Despite his all-star Citizens' Band of New York City's finest session players, little else on Oblivion manages to match those three tracks.
Fenner's Magnet, on the other hand, steers a more even keel, from the stately opener “Autumn Trees” to the Fleetwood Mac-ish soft pop of “Leo” and “How Hard It Is,” and concluding with the torchy piano cover of Paul Simon's “Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy,” with renowned jazz player Jason Moran. (October 25, 2007)
Chamillionaire – Ultimate Victory (Universal)
Anyone who thinks Southern rap is a one-dimensional pimp-and-ho show ala Hustle and Flow should meet Chamillionaire. Granted, the Grammy-winning MC (whose smash single “Ridin’” even warranted a Weird Al parody) spends almost half of his 80 minutes here on just such material. But he also pens some pointed political material that’s practically unheard of in this corner of the genre. Rather than blinging it up, his self-consciously materialistic rhymes actually possess insight into Bush-era America’s relentless pursuit of capital. After Iraq and Katrina, Chamillionaire would argue—Soprano-style—that cashing in however you can is not only fair game, but the only way to survive while the country burns. Yet even when telling straight-up ghetto tales, his strong storytelling still packs more into a single verse than 50 Cent does in an entire album. (October 18, 2007)
The Go! Team – Proof of Youth (Secret City/Fusion 3)
Double-dutch schoolgirls rap over 70s TV show themes: it doesn’t get any deeper than that descriptive blurb on the second album by this UK act, whose 2005 debut was a delightful sugar rush that sounded like Beck DJing a 60s pop club night. Many of those tracks were built on borrowed beats—few, if any, were used with permission. Now that The Go! Team are left mostly to their own devices, the thrill is gone. Maybe legal difficulties prevented the band from using the samples they wanted. Or, more likely, maybe this one-trick pony ran out of ideas very quickly. Not a single track here provides the debut’s initial pleasure: the vocals are shrill, the fun seems forced, and the cameo by Chuck D of Public Enemy is just plain weird. The youth of which they boast proof has a lot of growing up to do. (October 11, 2007)
Joe Henry – Civilians (Anti/Epitaph)
Though he’s been a singer/songwriter for over 15 years, with a worthy discography of his own behind him, Joe Henry is better known for producing vintage-sounding comeback albums for soul artists such as Solomon Burke and Bettye LaVette. Such is his reputation among musicians that the notoriously independent Ani DiFranco chose him as her first outside producer ever—a move that resulted in her best album in years.
While Henry’s recent solo work found him getting too wrapped up in ornate production, here he strips everything back to basics. His torchy vocals wrap themselves around songs about squandered goodwill and civil wars of various stripes, set to a wealth of waltzes anchored by guitarist Bill Frisell and Toronto bassist David Piltch (Holly Cole, k.d. lang). Henry is a classy guy, his aesthetic best dressed up in ragged dinner jackets and well-aged red wine, struggling to maintain poise and dignity amidst decay.
Yet such is the sustained mood that all the songs blend into each other, demarcated only by Henry’s killer one-liners particular to each narrative. He also indulges his flair for the theatrical: he’s been hanging around enough soul vocal vets to think that each line deserves maximum drama, though his own talents are much better suited to understatement.
He never misfires completely, however, and this is one of the finest singer/songwriter albums of the year. But he could take some lessons in brevity. (October 11, 2007)
Iron And Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog (Sub Pop/Warner)
Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam was never your typical folkie in the first place. Even though his first two sleeper hit albums were acoustic affairs with hushed vocals, he managed to transcend many of the clichés that come with the genre via extremely subtle shades and sometimes surrealistic lyrics—none of which distracted from the welcoming warmth from his campfire-friendly vibe.
The Shepherd’s Dog is the kind of album that all fans of acoustic acts dread the most: the one where the artist decides to expand their sonic template and invite all sorts of friends on board, just to see what happens. So here we find electric guitars, African rhythms, sitars, harmoniums, vocals run through Leslie speakers, trippy keyboards and other treats layered into Beam’s skeletal song structures.
It’s a credit to his sense of restraint that for Iron and Wine, more actually is more. Beam’s songs lose none of their intimacy while painting with plenty of new colours. He avoids any overt rockism by eschewing drum kits and using various hand percussion instead. As a result, even the heaviest moments here are never overbearing, and his excursions into dub reggae and psychedelia possess a weightless grace that makes them all the more engaging.
Sam Beam is never going to be just another guy with an acoustic guitar. This is not only stuffed with more memorable songs than most of his peers, but the headphone-friendly production pushes this clear into classic territory. If you were entranced by Beam’s beauty in the past, The Shepherd’s Dog suggests that he’s only beginning to bloom. (October 4, 2007; a different review runs in the current issue of Magnet)
Joni Mitchell – Shine (Hear)
Joni Mitchell doesn’t thank George W. Bush in the liner notes to her new album. But if it wasn’t for the moral chaos that is Bush’s legacy, it’s unlikely the legendary songwriter would have been roused from retirement for her first album of new material in nine years.
Five years ago, Mitchell announced her retreat from the music industry. As she watched the world go to hell in a handbasket, however, the guitarist picked up her pointed pen and her long-neglected piano to write a scathing series of songs about the end of the world as we know it. Everything from holy wars to a scorched earth to “cellphone zombies” feed into her frustration, with mixed results. Often it sounds like Al Gore wrote these lyrics, rather than the subtle poet that Mitchell is at her best.
Unlike much of her work of the past two decades, Mitchell strips things down here to little more than guitar, piano, a rhythm section and some saxophones—no layers of heavy synths, treated electric guitars or jazzy passages to muck everything up. It gives the work a greater gravitas, and her apocalyptic narratives are given plenty of room to breathe—even if her reduced vocal range still shows the effects of years of smoking.
She throws a bone to old fans with a version of “Big Yellow Taxi.” While it fits right in thematically, its jaunty rhythm—subdued as it is here—is out of step with the other sombre tales of “mass murder mysteries.”
Mitchell does betray some reserved optimism in the title track and the closing “If,” which is adopted from the Rudyard Kipling poem. But the mood of the album is best summed up with the embittered line: “If I had a heart, I’d cry.”
Now how does that go down with your coffee? (October 18, 2007)
The Rizdales – Radio Country (rizdales.com)
It's little wonder that rockabillly legend Wanda Jackson often taps London, Ontario's Rizdales to be her backing band. Not only are they well schooled in classic country, but they share her sardonic view of romance on songs like “High Heeled Homewrecker” and “I Could Tell You Lies.” Husband/wife duo Tom and Tara Dunphy pen poisoned valentines to each other with subtle wit and the kind of rich character writing that the genre has always excelled at. To top it off, both are compelling vocalists and Tara is responsible for the fine fiddle licks. (October 25, 2007)
-end-
In alphabetical order: Baby Eagle, Devendra Banhart, Jully Black, Broken Social Scene (Kevin Drew), Chris Brown/Kate Fenner, Chamillionaire, The Go! Team, Joe Henry, Iron & Wine, Joni Mitchell, the Rizdales.
Not appearing here, but that did run in the paper: will.i.am, Stacey Kent, James Blunt, the Acorn, San Serac, Sally Shapiro. If you work for any of these people and need a clipping, let me know.
Baby Eagle – No Blues (Outside)
The Constantines’ Steve Lambke branches out on his second album as Baby Eagle, expanding on the sparse settings that marked his first foray into solo acoustic material. This time, he traveled to to Sackville, NB, to team up with Julie Doiron, members of Shotgun and Jaybird and Feist’s touring band, all of whom provide eerie accompaniment to Lambke’s haunting lyrics. His thin, reedy voice is the litmus test for listeners, especially in such a stripped-down context as opposed to the Constantines’ rock onslaught. It isn’t ideally suited for this material, yet when it cracks—which it does often—it creates an intriguing sense of desperation to songs like "Driving Blind" and the title track. (October 18, 2007)
Devendra Banhart – Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (XL/Beggars)
One must be wary of the artist who thinks they can do everything. Here, Banhart tries on a closet full of new clothes: a young Elvis, a Haight-Ashbury hippie, a snarling psychedelic punk, a Brazilian troubadour, a gospel preacher, a singer in Santana, a spaced-out reggae singer who has lost his drummer.
There is great danger for this to descend into a schizophrenic mess, the work of an egomaniac who doesn’t know when to say no—which, truth be told, was the fate that awaited Banhart’s last album, Cripple Creek. But Thunder Canyon revels in its diversity, and Banhart never takes any of it too seriously. After all, anyone who writes a Jewish doo-wop song called “My Shabop Shalom Baby” can’t be all bad.
Not that he’s always goofing off. The chameleonic Banhart clearly loves all these musical genres without irony, and his songwriting adapts no matter what corner of the world he finds himself in. His spine-tingling vocals are always the focus—even if you’re not always sure that it’s still him on lead vocals. (October 4, 2007; a different review runs in this month's Magnet)
Jully Black – Revival (Universal)
Jully Black has been a star in the making since she was a Toronto high school student guesting on some of that city's hottest hip-hop singles. Her vocal talents have never been questioned, but until now she never had the right material to truly shine on her own—despite the fact that she's written for Destiny's Child and Nas. That changes starting now.
After touring with the Black Eyed Peas several years back, she bonded with their drummer Keith Harris, who produced this, her second major label release and a surefire breakthrough. With Harris at the helm, Black finds the enviable middle ground between neo-soul revivalists like Amy Winehouse and mainstream R&B like Mary J. Blige. Skittering beats, rock guitars, punchy piano riffs and gospel backing vocals all help strike a fine balance between big soul numbers—like the lead single, a cover of Etta James' “Seven Day Fool”—and contemplative ballads such as the socially conscious “Just a Moment” or the tribute to her late sister, “Catch Me When I Fall.”
It's hard to top the opening four songs—which include the feminist reggae anthem Queen and the party-starter DJ Play My Song—but Revival never sags. Soon enough Jully Black will be known for much more for her music rather than being a celebrity correspondent for E-talk Daily. (October 25, 2007)
Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew – Spirit If… (Arts and Crafts/EMI)
The overwhelming amount of talent in Broken Social Scene—which of course includes Feist, Jason Collett, Stars and Apostle of Hustle—threatened to crush the band entirely on their 2005 self-titled album, where an avalanche of sound overwhelmed any sense of direction or solid songwriting.
Co-founder Kevin Drew adopts a much more subtle approach here, allowing tiny details to colour a series of songs that outline his own personal turmoil (read: divorce) of recent years. It’s just as dense as any other Broken Social Scene album, yet everything breathes much easier. Drew doesn’t want to hit you over the head this time out; many of this album’s greatest pleasures are all but inaudible if you’re expecting the epic art rock he’s built his reputation on. It even appears deceptively slight upon initial listens.
Guests include all the usual BSS suspects—including Feist, Stars’ Amy Millan, most of Metric—as well as some personal heroes of Drew’s: Pavement’s Spiral Stairs, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis—and, uh, Tom Cochrane. (Skeptics alert: forget “Life is a Highway”—go back to Red Rider, right up to the “Boy Inside the Man” days.)
Because this is (kind of) a solo album, Drew also prints his lyrics for the first time, and mixes his vocals up front. Unlike his earlier songs—where the abstraction allowed the listener to project whatever they liked onto them—these are simultaneously more direct and yet still leave plenty of room for the listener’s own imagination. He also moves effortlessly from ambient electronics, acoustic folk, propulsive pop and raging rock—and even better, sometimes he makes it all in the same song.
Best of all, Spirit If… is never predictable, even in the carte blanche world of Broken Social Scene. (October 11, 2007)
Chris Brown and the Citizens' Band – Oblivion (chrisbrownmusic.com)
Kate Fenner – Magnet (katefenner.com)
Brown and Fenner's careers have been intertwined for over 20 years now, ever since they were high school students in the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, and then later as a duo. It used to be that Brown was the socially conscious poet and songwriter behind Fenner's rich and resonant voice; as time goes on, Fenner has become a songwriter who can stand on her own and Brown's voice gets better with age.
Now that they're charting separate paths, they still share the same backing band and Brown writes three songs on Fenner's second solo album. One of them is the majestic epic “Paris,” where Fenner delivers one of her finest vocal performances with a Cohen-esque lyric that also stands as one of Brown's best.
He saves a few more knockouts for his own album: the inspirational title track; the gripping political screed “The Gates” (which boasts the opening line, "The rapture came, and it only let them down"); and “Image of a Man,” a powerful ode to the passing of Johnny Cash that features Sarah Harmer on backing vocals. Yet for Brown, it's all or nothing. Despite his all-star Citizens' Band of New York City's finest session players, little else on Oblivion manages to match those three tracks.
Fenner's Magnet, on the other hand, steers a more even keel, from the stately opener “Autumn Trees” to the Fleetwood Mac-ish soft pop of “Leo” and “How Hard It Is,” and concluding with the torchy piano cover of Paul Simon's “Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy,” with renowned jazz player Jason Moran. (October 25, 2007)
Chamillionaire – Ultimate Victory (Universal)
Anyone who thinks Southern rap is a one-dimensional pimp-and-ho show ala Hustle and Flow should meet Chamillionaire. Granted, the Grammy-winning MC (whose smash single “Ridin’” even warranted a Weird Al parody) spends almost half of his 80 minutes here on just such material. But he also pens some pointed political material that’s practically unheard of in this corner of the genre. Rather than blinging it up, his self-consciously materialistic rhymes actually possess insight into Bush-era America’s relentless pursuit of capital. After Iraq and Katrina, Chamillionaire would argue—Soprano-style—that cashing in however you can is not only fair game, but the only way to survive while the country burns. Yet even when telling straight-up ghetto tales, his strong storytelling still packs more into a single verse than 50 Cent does in an entire album. (October 18, 2007)
The Go! Team – Proof of Youth (Secret City/Fusion 3)
Double-dutch schoolgirls rap over 70s TV show themes: it doesn’t get any deeper than that descriptive blurb on the second album by this UK act, whose 2005 debut was a delightful sugar rush that sounded like Beck DJing a 60s pop club night. Many of those tracks were built on borrowed beats—few, if any, were used with permission. Now that The Go! Team are left mostly to their own devices, the thrill is gone. Maybe legal difficulties prevented the band from using the samples they wanted. Or, more likely, maybe this one-trick pony ran out of ideas very quickly. Not a single track here provides the debut’s initial pleasure: the vocals are shrill, the fun seems forced, and the cameo by Chuck D of Public Enemy is just plain weird. The youth of which they boast proof has a lot of growing up to do. (October 11, 2007)
Joe Henry – Civilians (Anti/Epitaph)
Though he’s been a singer/songwriter for over 15 years, with a worthy discography of his own behind him, Joe Henry is better known for producing vintage-sounding comeback albums for soul artists such as Solomon Burke and Bettye LaVette. Such is his reputation among musicians that the notoriously independent Ani DiFranco chose him as her first outside producer ever—a move that resulted in her best album in years.
While Henry’s recent solo work found him getting too wrapped up in ornate production, here he strips everything back to basics. His torchy vocals wrap themselves around songs about squandered goodwill and civil wars of various stripes, set to a wealth of waltzes anchored by guitarist Bill Frisell and Toronto bassist David Piltch (Holly Cole, k.d. lang). Henry is a classy guy, his aesthetic best dressed up in ragged dinner jackets and well-aged red wine, struggling to maintain poise and dignity amidst decay.
Yet such is the sustained mood that all the songs blend into each other, demarcated only by Henry’s killer one-liners particular to each narrative. He also indulges his flair for the theatrical: he’s been hanging around enough soul vocal vets to think that each line deserves maximum drama, though his own talents are much better suited to understatement.
He never misfires completely, however, and this is one of the finest singer/songwriter albums of the year. But he could take some lessons in brevity. (October 11, 2007)
Iron And Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog (Sub Pop/Warner)
Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam was never your typical folkie in the first place. Even though his first two sleeper hit albums were acoustic affairs with hushed vocals, he managed to transcend many of the clichés that come with the genre via extremely subtle shades and sometimes surrealistic lyrics—none of which distracted from the welcoming warmth from his campfire-friendly vibe.
The Shepherd’s Dog is the kind of album that all fans of acoustic acts dread the most: the one where the artist decides to expand their sonic template and invite all sorts of friends on board, just to see what happens. So here we find electric guitars, African rhythms, sitars, harmoniums, vocals run through Leslie speakers, trippy keyboards and other treats layered into Beam’s skeletal song structures.
It’s a credit to his sense of restraint that for Iron and Wine, more actually is more. Beam’s songs lose none of their intimacy while painting with plenty of new colours. He avoids any overt rockism by eschewing drum kits and using various hand percussion instead. As a result, even the heaviest moments here are never overbearing, and his excursions into dub reggae and psychedelia possess a weightless grace that makes them all the more engaging.
Sam Beam is never going to be just another guy with an acoustic guitar. This is not only stuffed with more memorable songs than most of his peers, but the headphone-friendly production pushes this clear into classic territory. If you were entranced by Beam’s beauty in the past, The Shepherd’s Dog suggests that he’s only beginning to bloom. (October 4, 2007; a different review runs in the current issue of Magnet)
Joni Mitchell – Shine (Hear)
Joni Mitchell doesn’t thank George W. Bush in the liner notes to her new album. But if it wasn’t for the moral chaos that is Bush’s legacy, it’s unlikely the legendary songwriter would have been roused from retirement for her first album of new material in nine years.
Five years ago, Mitchell announced her retreat from the music industry. As she watched the world go to hell in a handbasket, however, the guitarist picked up her pointed pen and her long-neglected piano to write a scathing series of songs about the end of the world as we know it. Everything from holy wars to a scorched earth to “cellphone zombies” feed into her frustration, with mixed results. Often it sounds like Al Gore wrote these lyrics, rather than the subtle poet that Mitchell is at her best.
Unlike much of her work of the past two decades, Mitchell strips things down here to little more than guitar, piano, a rhythm section and some saxophones—no layers of heavy synths, treated electric guitars or jazzy passages to muck everything up. It gives the work a greater gravitas, and her apocalyptic narratives are given plenty of room to breathe—even if her reduced vocal range still shows the effects of years of smoking.
She throws a bone to old fans with a version of “Big Yellow Taxi.” While it fits right in thematically, its jaunty rhythm—subdued as it is here—is out of step with the other sombre tales of “mass murder mysteries.”
Mitchell does betray some reserved optimism in the title track and the closing “If,” which is adopted from the Rudyard Kipling poem. But the mood of the album is best summed up with the embittered line: “If I had a heart, I’d cry.”
Now how does that go down with your coffee? (October 18, 2007)
The Rizdales – Radio Country (rizdales.com)
It's little wonder that rockabillly legend Wanda Jackson often taps London, Ontario's Rizdales to be her backing band. Not only are they well schooled in classic country, but they share her sardonic view of romance on songs like “High Heeled Homewrecker” and “I Could Tell You Lies.” Husband/wife duo Tom and Tara Dunphy pen poisoned valentines to each other with subtle wit and the kind of rich character writing that the genre has always excelled at. To top it off, both are compelling vocalists and Tara is responsible for the fine fiddle licks. (October 25, 2007)
-end-
Thursday, November 15, 2007
September 07 review round-up
Today's Eye Weekly has an article I did on Tinariwen; transcript will arrive in the coming days. Note that their website has a spiffy new design. That's the good news. The bad news is that none of the links to older stories work anymore, so I'll do my best to update this here site to ensure everything is copacetic.
Because I moved house in September, I forgot to post some reviews that ran in the mainstream daily newspapers Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury. October's will follow shortly, as will material from Eye Weekly as soon as the links work.
Reviewed here in alphabetical order: Baby Elephant, Blue Rodeo, 50 Cent, Hot Hot Heat, Lyle Lovett, Madlib, Carolyn Mark, Sixtoo, Weakerthans, Kanye West.
Not appearing here, but ran in the paper in September: Polaris Prize compilation, Manu Chao,
Ben Harper, Exploding Star Orchestra, Paul Anka. If you work for any of these artists and need a clipping, let me know.
Baby Elephant – Turn My Teeth Up! (GFM/Sonic Unyon)
When Prince Paul sampled Parliament on the classic De La Soul album 3 Ft. High and Risin’, he knew as well as anyone else that keyboardist Bernie Worrell was responsible for the way we have heard synths and keyboards in pop, funk and rock music since the mid-70s.
Here, Prince Paul and Worrell team up with some of the latter’s former collaborators—including George Clinton, David Byrne and Nona Hendryx—to make a pop album that’s considerably more focused than Worrell’s jam-based band the Woo Warriors. The “teeth” of the title refer to his arsenal of keyboards, which colour every corner of this futuristic funk with nary a guitar in sight. He’s just as freaky as ever, as are some of the other guests that Paul lines up—including original dancehall MC Yellowman, who sounds about 90 years old.
Worrell, on the other hand, is totally timeless, which is to be expected for such a sci-fi freak. In an era where synths are too often used as crutches for the lazy, Worrell reminds us what a difference it makes when they’re in the hands of a master. (September 13, 2007)
Blue Rodeo – Small Miracles (Warner)
Nearly every song here finds Blue Rodeo acting exactly their age, approaching failed relationships with regret and enduring occasional bad times for the greater good. These lyrical themes are exactly what you might expect from a band that has endured a series of line-up changes and solo albums from the two main songwriters. But what we really expect is a collection of songs that could hold a candle to their best work—which we don’t get here. Jim Cuddy scores the only knockout here with the small-town-small-minds ballad “This Town,” but otherwise both he and Greg Keelor seem stuck in first gear. Eleven albums and 22 years later, it might be a small miracle that Blue Rodeo are still together, but this certainly sounds like they’re phoning it in. (September 27, 2007)
50 Cent – Curtis (Aftermath/Universal)
On the laundry list of crimes against modern culture that 50 Cent is guilty of, nothing is more galling than the fact that he cops to his con and openly laughs at his own audience. “I ain’t even gotta rap now, life is made … I’m laughin’ straight to the bank with this/ ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Not that he cares about anyone but himself: not the bitches he’s bangin’ (“bring ‘em in/ kick ‘em out”), not the suckas he’s clockin’ (“I’ll Still Kill”), not any poor sod that doesn’t serve as a means to an end. Furthermore, he continually wants it both ways: to be the respected king of the ’hood while kickin’ back in the south of France and shopping for shoes in Milan.
“If I give you all of me, what you gonna give me back?” asks Mary J. Blige during a vocal cameo. It’s a fair question. What do we get out of this beyond a verbal beatdown in every single verse by this “stanky rich” gangsta narcissist?
50 Cent splits his time evenly between checking his bank account (“I Get Money”), checking his back for any perceived indignation (“Fully Loaded Clip”), and finding new ways to be the most misogynist seduction artist in the history of pop music. That is, until Eminem shows him up on the loathsome “Peep Show,” offering to defecate on the object of his affection. Good thing such harmless juvenilia is being marketed to kids. Even Justin Timberlake and Timbaland can’t sex up the lifeless “Ayo Technology.”
None of the other high profile guests, on-and-off-mic, fare much better. 50 Cent has coasted by with lame lyrics before, but this time his biggest problems are the boring beats, muddy production and lack of any serious pop hooks—a blessing in disguise for those wishing he’d just wither up and go away.
As tiresome as this is, what’s particularly hilarious is “Man Down (Censored),” where the blanked out vocals make you wonder what 50 could be possibly saying that’s worse than the cursing, cocksuckin’ and motherfuckin’ going on in the rest of the track, with 50 repeatedly boasting “I’ll murder ‘em” in the chorus.
Even funnier is his recent off-stage show of being publicly offended by a video game called Shoot the Rapper, featuring an animated character physically modeled after him. It seems that the tough guy can’t take a taste of his own medicine—even though that very recipe is what made this dumb-ass douchebag famous in the first place.
Hopefully he’s man enough to keep his rap retirement pledge should Kanye West wind up on the top of the charts this week. (September 13, 2007)
Hot Hot Heat – Happiness Ltd. (Warner)
The bombastic and theatrical title track here concludes with a lighter-in-the-air power ballad ending repeating, “It’s all over now.”
Which it could have been: after their tepid sophomore album Elevator, many were ready to write off this Victoria, BC power pop band—including founding guitarist Dante DeCaro, who defected to the much more promising Wolf Parade shortly after Elevator was released.
Noting that Hot Hot Heat have unnecessarily resurrected a track here from an earlier EP (“5 Times Out Of 100”) isn’t a good indicator of new ideas, either.
And yet Happiness Ltd. finds them rediscovering exuberant the pop hooks that they used to excel at, while maintaining a variety of moods. Singer Steve Bays has toned down some of his more annoying vocal tics without entirely surrendering his personality as a singer. The rest of the band continue to be inspired by the 80s, but this time there is less influence from the skinny tie post-punk crowd than by the stadium/radio pop that the Killers are trying to resurrect—and there at least three or four anthemic tracks here that would put the latter jokers to shame, especially with drummer Paul Hawley and bassist Dustin Hawthorne injecting some badly needed vitality into this type of material. (September 20, 2007)
Lyle Lovett – It’s Not Big, It’s Large (Lost Highway/ Universal)
If the album title sounds a bit defensive, it’s because Lovett is still crawling back into the third phase of his career, following a seven-year lapse that found one of the most refreshing songwriting voices of the 80s oddly silent.
His last album, 2004’s My Baby Don’t Tolerate, was his most conventional Nashville album, with little of the sardonic storytelling that always set him apart. This time out he’s still playing it straight, but he welcomes back some of the R&B and gospel influences that were his trademark in the early 90s.
Sadly, it’s a trade-off for the fact that his songs were more engaging the last time out. The best material here is the stuff that sounds like Lovett and his Large Band fooling around, like the playful “Make It Happy” and “Up in Indiana.” The strength of his band and the gospel backing singers elevate the weaker material, and Lovett himself is in fine voice.
On one chorus here he sings: “Life’s been good to me… It could be all downhill from here.” Doubtful, of course. Yet still, this is far from his finest hour. (September 20, 2007)
Madlib – Beat Konducta Vol 3-4: India (Stones Throw/Koch)
Now that all the vintage soul samples appear to have been snapped up, hip-hop producers are starting to look elsewhere. Kanye West can be heard sampling Ethiopian and German records these days, but hot underground hip-hop producer Madlib has bigger fish to fry: India, home to the biggest music and film industry outside of the U.S.
Here he has his way with hundreds of Bollywood soundtracks, slicing them into tiny two-minute hip-hop instrumentals: 34 tracks in 61 minutes. There’s plenty of funk to be found on the subcontinent, and many of the minor key string samples from this rich source material fit in perfectly with Madlib’s hazy, lazy signature sound.
For a man whose prolific output has more than its share of quality dips, he sounds genuinely inspired here. And who knows—maybe some of it will creep into the work he’s doing right now with Ghostface Killah and Erykah Badu. (September 27, 2007)
Carolyn Mark – Nothing is Free (Mint/Outside)
As anyone who has been there will tell you, Saltspring Island in B.C. is overflowing with beauty and splendour, characteristics that have always attracted a large artistic community. Carolyn Mark doesn’t live there—she hails from Victoria—but by recording her sixth album on Saltspring, the songwriter has emerged with her prettiest collection to date.
She’s always been a strong singer—after all, she holds her own with Neko Case in their duo The Corn Sisters—but she’s never sounded better than she does here. The natural reverb helps, courtesy of the community hall where this was recorded mostly live with virtuoso violinist Diona Davies (Geoff Berner, Po’Girl) and guitarists Paul Pigat and Paul Rigby. Without a drummer present, Mark doesn’t have to project at rock-band levels and every player exudes elegance on both the ballads and the bluegrass-tinged numbers.
Which is all a bit strange: despite the pristine environment, the lyrics suggest that the salty songwriter is doing some Sunday morning soul-searching, going through a mid-life crisis triggered by one too many tours. More so than ever, Mark’s songs concern the fallacy of fidelity—especially on the road—and being “Poisoned With Hope” when it comes to finding happiness in either life or one’s career. (September 20, 2007)
Sixtoo – Jackals and Vipers in Envy of Man (Ninja Tune/Outside)
Few people can make a compelling album of instrumental hip-hop, but Montreal’s Robert Squire—aka Sixtoo—is certainly one of them, and this may well be his finest work. Jackals consists of 13 unnamed tracks mixing dark beats with brooding textures of piano and guitar that sound like they’re lifted from a spy movie soundtrack.
Sixtoo has long since retired as an MC, but his short attention span ensures that he can ride a steady groove while consistently shifting all the other elements of a track to maintain interest. The moody background never gets too morose before the big beats bounce everything back to the dance floor, albeit one where jazzy excursions and druggy and dubbed-out disorientation are the norm.
Montreal scene trainspotters will note that two members of Wolf Parade show up here (drummer Arlen Thompson and electronics manipulator Hadji Bakara), though this is Sixtoo’s show from beginning to end. (September 27, 2007)
The Weakerthans – Reunion Tour (Anti/Epitaph)
Perhaps the worst writing advice ever is to “write what you know.” Because of that tired maxim, we’ve been cursed with generations upon generations of self-absorbed songwriters who think that every domestic detail is worthy of a major artistic statement.
John K. Samson of Winnipeg’s Weakerthans has proven to be a master at mapping melancholy and awkward emotions, on albums like 2000’s classic Left and Leaving—an album that announced the arrival of a major Canadian songwriter. But after battling a bad case of writer’s block in recent years, Samson returns with 11 character sketches that are far from autobiographical: a bus driver, a medical oddity, a dot-com capitalist, a legendary NHL goalie, and a guy who spotted Sasquatch. Written with his usual flair for economical prose, each song reads like a short story with maximum detail conveyed in a few short lines.
The Weakerthans’ last album, 2003’s Reconstruction Site, showed a danger of the band milking its past punk sound while offering redundant roots rock shadings as an alternative. Yet here they find inventive ways to embellish their core strengths as a 4/4 rock band, with drummer Jason Tait once again proving to be their secret weapon on vibes, percussion, keyboards and banjo. Even the track here that most recalls—or, uh, rips off—previous work (the opening anti-anthem “Civil Twilight”) sparkles with a life lacking in most of the last album.
If Left and Leaving was a perfect encapsulation of how poetic punk rockers grapple with adulthood, Reunion Tour is written with a wealth of perspective and empathy, set to a diverse musical landscape that succeeds on both the rockers and the reflective numbers.
(September 27, 2007)
Kanye West – Graduation (Roc-a-Fella/Universal)
Having the biggest ego in hip-hop takes a lot of work. Which is part of the reason why Kanye West sounds humbled on this follow-up to 2005’s pop masterstroke Late Registration.
Lyrically, he dials down the hubris—well, as much as he can—and even ends his Graduation speeches with Big Brother, a bittersweet ode to his mentor, Jay-Z. Musically, he reaches even further than usual: samples here include sensitive 70s folkie Laura Nyro, psychedelic German rock band Can, Steely Dan, and—on the album’s hands-down highlight "Stronger"—French electro-house superstars Daft Punk. Even when his borrowing is less blatant, West still has the most catholic taste of any mainstream hip-hop artist.
Most of this material is considerably more laid back than you’d expect from this attention magnet. With the exception of "Stronger," there’s little here that’s likely to light up a club. West is in a contemplative mood, which works both for and against him: the reflective "I Wonder" and "Flashing Lights" are both striking, string-laden dramas atop heavy beats, while "Everything I Am" is a sappy sag and "Drunk And Hot Girls" sounds like a stoned, late night reflection on a life of vacuous clubhopping. A few more fireworks would have helped.
(September 13, 2007)
-end-
Because I moved house in September, I forgot to post some reviews that ran in the mainstream daily newspapers Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury. October's will follow shortly, as will material from Eye Weekly as soon as the links work.
Reviewed here in alphabetical order: Baby Elephant, Blue Rodeo, 50 Cent, Hot Hot Heat, Lyle Lovett, Madlib, Carolyn Mark, Sixtoo, Weakerthans, Kanye West.
Not appearing here, but ran in the paper in September: Polaris Prize compilation, Manu Chao,
Ben Harper, Exploding Star Orchestra, Paul Anka. If you work for any of these artists and need a clipping, let me know.
Baby Elephant – Turn My Teeth Up! (GFM/Sonic Unyon)
When Prince Paul sampled Parliament on the classic De La Soul album 3 Ft. High and Risin’, he knew as well as anyone else that keyboardist Bernie Worrell was responsible for the way we have heard synths and keyboards in pop, funk and rock music since the mid-70s.
Here, Prince Paul and Worrell team up with some of the latter’s former collaborators—including George Clinton, David Byrne and Nona Hendryx—to make a pop album that’s considerably more focused than Worrell’s jam-based band the Woo Warriors. The “teeth” of the title refer to his arsenal of keyboards, which colour every corner of this futuristic funk with nary a guitar in sight. He’s just as freaky as ever, as are some of the other guests that Paul lines up—including original dancehall MC Yellowman, who sounds about 90 years old.
Worrell, on the other hand, is totally timeless, which is to be expected for such a sci-fi freak. In an era where synths are too often used as crutches for the lazy, Worrell reminds us what a difference it makes when they’re in the hands of a master. (September 13, 2007)
Blue Rodeo – Small Miracles (Warner)
Nearly every song here finds Blue Rodeo acting exactly their age, approaching failed relationships with regret and enduring occasional bad times for the greater good. These lyrical themes are exactly what you might expect from a band that has endured a series of line-up changes and solo albums from the two main songwriters. But what we really expect is a collection of songs that could hold a candle to their best work—which we don’t get here. Jim Cuddy scores the only knockout here with the small-town-small-minds ballad “This Town,” but otherwise both he and Greg Keelor seem stuck in first gear. Eleven albums and 22 years later, it might be a small miracle that Blue Rodeo are still together, but this certainly sounds like they’re phoning it in. (September 27, 2007)
50 Cent – Curtis (Aftermath/Universal)
On the laundry list of crimes against modern culture that 50 Cent is guilty of, nothing is more galling than the fact that he cops to his con and openly laughs at his own audience. “I ain’t even gotta rap now, life is made … I’m laughin’ straight to the bank with this/ ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Not that he cares about anyone but himself: not the bitches he’s bangin’ (“bring ‘em in/ kick ‘em out”), not the suckas he’s clockin’ (“I’ll Still Kill”), not any poor sod that doesn’t serve as a means to an end. Furthermore, he continually wants it both ways: to be the respected king of the ’hood while kickin’ back in the south of France and shopping for shoes in Milan.
“If I give you all of me, what you gonna give me back?” asks Mary J. Blige during a vocal cameo. It’s a fair question. What do we get out of this beyond a verbal beatdown in every single verse by this “stanky rich” gangsta narcissist?
50 Cent splits his time evenly between checking his bank account (“I Get Money”), checking his back for any perceived indignation (“Fully Loaded Clip”), and finding new ways to be the most misogynist seduction artist in the history of pop music. That is, until Eminem shows him up on the loathsome “Peep Show,” offering to defecate on the object of his affection. Good thing such harmless juvenilia is being marketed to kids. Even Justin Timberlake and Timbaland can’t sex up the lifeless “Ayo Technology.”
None of the other high profile guests, on-and-off-mic, fare much better. 50 Cent has coasted by with lame lyrics before, but this time his biggest problems are the boring beats, muddy production and lack of any serious pop hooks—a blessing in disguise for those wishing he’d just wither up and go away.
As tiresome as this is, what’s particularly hilarious is “Man Down (Censored),” where the blanked out vocals make you wonder what 50 could be possibly saying that’s worse than the cursing, cocksuckin’ and motherfuckin’ going on in the rest of the track, with 50 repeatedly boasting “I’ll murder ‘em” in the chorus.
Even funnier is his recent off-stage show of being publicly offended by a video game called Shoot the Rapper, featuring an animated character physically modeled after him. It seems that the tough guy can’t take a taste of his own medicine—even though that very recipe is what made this dumb-ass douchebag famous in the first place.
Hopefully he’s man enough to keep his rap retirement pledge should Kanye West wind up on the top of the charts this week. (September 13, 2007)
Hot Hot Heat – Happiness Ltd. (Warner)
The bombastic and theatrical title track here concludes with a lighter-in-the-air power ballad ending repeating, “It’s all over now.”
Which it could have been: after their tepid sophomore album Elevator, many were ready to write off this Victoria, BC power pop band—including founding guitarist Dante DeCaro, who defected to the much more promising Wolf Parade shortly after Elevator was released.
Noting that Hot Hot Heat have unnecessarily resurrected a track here from an earlier EP (“5 Times Out Of 100”) isn’t a good indicator of new ideas, either.
And yet Happiness Ltd. finds them rediscovering exuberant the pop hooks that they used to excel at, while maintaining a variety of moods. Singer Steve Bays has toned down some of his more annoying vocal tics without entirely surrendering his personality as a singer. The rest of the band continue to be inspired by the 80s, but this time there is less influence from the skinny tie post-punk crowd than by the stadium/radio pop that the Killers are trying to resurrect—and there at least three or four anthemic tracks here that would put the latter jokers to shame, especially with drummer Paul Hawley and bassist Dustin Hawthorne injecting some badly needed vitality into this type of material. (September 20, 2007)
Lyle Lovett – It’s Not Big, It’s Large (Lost Highway/ Universal)
If the album title sounds a bit defensive, it’s because Lovett is still crawling back into the third phase of his career, following a seven-year lapse that found one of the most refreshing songwriting voices of the 80s oddly silent.
His last album, 2004’s My Baby Don’t Tolerate, was his most conventional Nashville album, with little of the sardonic storytelling that always set him apart. This time out he’s still playing it straight, but he welcomes back some of the R&B and gospel influences that were his trademark in the early 90s.
Sadly, it’s a trade-off for the fact that his songs were more engaging the last time out. The best material here is the stuff that sounds like Lovett and his Large Band fooling around, like the playful “Make It Happy” and “Up in Indiana.” The strength of his band and the gospel backing singers elevate the weaker material, and Lovett himself is in fine voice.
On one chorus here he sings: “Life’s been good to me… It could be all downhill from here.” Doubtful, of course. Yet still, this is far from his finest hour. (September 20, 2007)
Madlib – Beat Konducta Vol 3-4: India (Stones Throw/Koch)
Now that all the vintage soul samples appear to have been snapped up, hip-hop producers are starting to look elsewhere. Kanye West can be heard sampling Ethiopian and German records these days, but hot underground hip-hop producer Madlib has bigger fish to fry: India, home to the biggest music and film industry outside of the U.S.
Here he has his way with hundreds of Bollywood soundtracks, slicing them into tiny two-minute hip-hop instrumentals: 34 tracks in 61 minutes. There’s plenty of funk to be found on the subcontinent, and many of the minor key string samples from this rich source material fit in perfectly with Madlib’s hazy, lazy signature sound.
For a man whose prolific output has more than its share of quality dips, he sounds genuinely inspired here. And who knows—maybe some of it will creep into the work he’s doing right now with Ghostface Killah and Erykah Badu. (September 27, 2007)
Carolyn Mark – Nothing is Free (Mint/Outside)
As anyone who has been there will tell you, Saltspring Island in B.C. is overflowing with beauty and splendour, characteristics that have always attracted a large artistic community. Carolyn Mark doesn’t live there—she hails from Victoria—but by recording her sixth album on Saltspring, the songwriter has emerged with her prettiest collection to date.
She’s always been a strong singer—after all, she holds her own with Neko Case in their duo The Corn Sisters—but she’s never sounded better than she does here. The natural reverb helps, courtesy of the community hall where this was recorded mostly live with virtuoso violinist Diona Davies (Geoff Berner, Po’Girl) and guitarists Paul Pigat and Paul Rigby. Without a drummer present, Mark doesn’t have to project at rock-band levels and every player exudes elegance on both the ballads and the bluegrass-tinged numbers.
Which is all a bit strange: despite the pristine environment, the lyrics suggest that the salty songwriter is doing some Sunday morning soul-searching, going through a mid-life crisis triggered by one too many tours. More so than ever, Mark’s songs concern the fallacy of fidelity—especially on the road—and being “Poisoned With Hope” when it comes to finding happiness in either life or one’s career. (September 20, 2007)
Sixtoo – Jackals and Vipers in Envy of Man (Ninja Tune/Outside)
Few people can make a compelling album of instrumental hip-hop, but Montreal’s Robert Squire—aka Sixtoo—is certainly one of them, and this may well be his finest work. Jackals consists of 13 unnamed tracks mixing dark beats with brooding textures of piano and guitar that sound like they’re lifted from a spy movie soundtrack.
Sixtoo has long since retired as an MC, but his short attention span ensures that he can ride a steady groove while consistently shifting all the other elements of a track to maintain interest. The moody background never gets too morose before the big beats bounce everything back to the dance floor, albeit one where jazzy excursions and druggy and dubbed-out disorientation are the norm.
Montreal scene trainspotters will note that two members of Wolf Parade show up here (drummer Arlen Thompson and electronics manipulator Hadji Bakara), though this is Sixtoo’s show from beginning to end. (September 27, 2007)
The Weakerthans – Reunion Tour (Anti/Epitaph)
Perhaps the worst writing advice ever is to “write what you know.” Because of that tired maxim, we’ve been cursed with generations upon generations of self-absorbed songwriters who think that every domestic detail is worthy of a major artistic statement.
John K. Samson of Winnipeg’s Weakerthans has proven to be a master at mapping melancholy and awkward emotions, on albums like 2000’s classic Left and Leaving—an album that announced the arrival of a major Canadian songwriter. But after battling a bad case of writer’s block in recent years, Samson returns with 11 character sketches that are far from autobiographical: a bus driver, a medical oddity, a dot-com capitalist, a legendary NHL goalie, and a guy who spotted Sasquatch. Written with his usual flair for economical prose, each song reads like a short story with maximum detail conveyed in a few short lines.
The Weakerthans’ last album, 2003’s Reconstruction Site, showed a danger of the band milking its past punk sound while offering redundant roots rock shadings as an alternative. Yet here they find inventive ways to embellish their core strengths as a 4/4 rock band, with drummer Jason Tait once again proving to be their secret weapon on vibes, percussion, keyboards and banjo. Even the track here that most recalls—or, uh, rips off—previous work (the opening anti-anthem “Civil Twilight”) sparkles with a life lacking in most of the last album.
If Left and Leaving was a perfect encapsulation of how poetic punk rockers grapple with adulthood, Reunion Tour is written with a wealth of perspective and empathy, set to a diverse musical landscape that succeeds on both the rockers and the reflective numbers.
(September 27, 2007)
Kanye West – Graduation (Roc-a-Fella/Universal)
Having the biggest ego in hip-hop takes a lot of work. Which is part of the reason why Kanye West sounds humbled on this follow-up to 2005’s pop masterstroke Late Registration.
Lyrically, he dials down the hubris—well, as much as he can—and even ends his Graduation speeches with Big Brother, a bittersweet ode to his mentor, Jay-Z. Musically, he reaches even further than usual: samples here include sensitive 70s folkie Laura Nyro, psychedelic German rock band Can, Steely Dan, and—on the album’s hands-down highlight "Stronger"—French electro-house superstars Daft Punk. Even when his borrowing is less blatant, West still has the most catholic taste of any mainstream hip-hop artist.
Most of this material is considerably more laid back than you’d expect from this attention magnet. With the exception of "Stronger," there’s little here that’s likely to light up a club. West is in a contemplative mood, which works both for and against him: the reflective "I Wonder" and "Flashing Lights" are both striking, string-laden dramas atop heavy beats, while "Everything I Am" is a sappy sag and "Drunk And Hot Girls" sounds like a stoned, late night reflection on a life of vacuous clubhopping. A few more fireworks would have helped.
(September 13, 2007)
-end-
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